Shadows Of Denver
by Cypher-SB
Summary: A newcomer's experience to the shadows of the Denver FRFZ. Based on Catalyst Labs Denver mission modules (SRM02 missions, for those who can't seem to figure this out). Results not guaranteed to match cannon material (especially from Run 20 and on), and the runner teams are characters of my own creation. Please check my profile page for a poll regarding future stories.
1. Run 01 : Parliament Of Thieves

Run 01 : Parliament Of Thieves (based on the mission written by John Dunn)

Denver never used to be such a fucked up place, or so John had been told. Large cities always seemed to have their problems with crime and such, but apparently things had gotten progressively worse over the last eighty years. That was about as much as John cared to think about how things were. This was largely because he could not remember anything from maybe a few weeks before this day.

Things were not easy for John right from the start. Practically no money, no knowledge of current events, or people, things had been very hard. It also did not help that he had no system identification number, or SIN for short, and no other records of him existed, which meant that there was no way to track down any family John might have.

But not all was lost. One of John's earliest memories was waking up and looking at the weirdest looking person he had ever seen. Understandable since she looked like a cross between a human and a cat.

Her name was Tabitha Morgan, though she preferred to be called Tabby. She was human, though also something called a changeling. Nothing like a changeling out of Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, or any other kind of outlandish fiction, but a more generic term used for anyone that expressed traits beyond the metahuman norm. Something to do with the passing of Halley's Comet back in 2061, or so John was told. Not that he would have remembered, having been roughly two years old at the time. Over nine years later changelings were still popping up, but at less than a fraction of what had appeared during the passing of Halley's Comet. At least, that was the official statistic.

Tabby had a coat of short fur covering her body reminiscent of a tabby cat's, and had the pointed ears to match. To find another changeling that bore a similar resemblance would be difficult to say the least.

What Tabby was, and recognizing a similar trait in John, was a benefit to him. John too was a changeling, though what gave him away was a much less obvious discoloration of the eyes. The sclera of John's eyes, or what is commonly called the white part of the eyes, was a brilliant blue in color, with a slightly but noticeably darker iris, and even a blue tinted pupil. The advantage to John was that he could claim he had bioware or cyberware eyes, where such designs were possible. John opted to conceal this entirely, wearing goggles or wraparound glasses at all times and using the excuse that he had a super sensitivity to light. As a side effect his eyes were just as good as those of any elf or dwarf in poor light, seeing as clearly as daylight when there was little light, and in shades of gray seeing heat when there was almost no light at all.

John's goggles were more than just to cover his eyes with blacked out lenses. Built to the outsides of the optics were the workings of a commlink, with trodes woven into the strap that went around his head. With a handful of hacking programs, among others, uploaded into it, it would make a convenient cover for if ever he would get caught hacking. Then there was the built in vision package that could cover for his enhanced vision with the lack of any augmentations.

Outside of the odd eye color, John's meter and a half height and blonde hair would have made him a perfect poster child for Aryan pride as the ideal child.

Tabby had helped out John in getting on his feet and on his own, but in such a capitalistic dystopia such help had not come for free. Especially when megacorporations ran the nation's governments. At least he did not have to move in with anyone despite looking like he was about twelve years old.

John had a natural gift with computers and the matrix. To John, this was nothing unusual at all as he saw objects floating in the air like illusions and holograms almost all over the place. He had a way of making computers do things that he wanted them to do, and after the third or fourth time that he had accidentally made a vending machine crash because of his influences did he figure out that he was actually hacking them by the virtue of his will alone. The average citizen could not do this the same way John did, and those who had the right programs and equipment could do the same.

It was not long after Tabby had met John that she had figured that he was a technomancer, a person who could work the wireless world without any gear and by their mind alone. It was a rare gift to be a technomancer, but in a fashion a curse as well. To the general public, technomancers were to be feared as they could hack a person's brain as well as any wireless computer. To some of the megacorporations that manipulated the governments of the world, technomancers were a thing to experiment and possibly exploit.

Out of curiosity John had even tried a few times to hack a person's brain. Ultimately he knew he could hack commlinks, drones, vehicles, and more, but hacking a metahuman's brain was impossible. He always seemed to hit a barrier when he tried to cross through whatever direct neural interface a person had to actually slip into a person's brain. This had brought up the question of who the dumb fuck was that thought technomancers could hack peoples' brains.

With Tabby's help, John learned about what he needed to conceal his technomancer nature. After a few hacking jobs that blew Tabby's expectations away, John had gotten more than some gear, but also an out of the way place to crash.

There were several problems with where John lived, and had spent nearly a month's worth of what life he could remember there. First and foremost among them were that he lived near some forgotten subway tunnels, much like a bunch of mutant turtles did in sewers in a nearly forgotten series of comics. This meant that John had to deal with rats and other denizens underground, some of which were not very friendly to say the least, especially to lone kids.

A benefit of this was that he lived not too far from a smugglers' route between two sectors of Denver, between the part owned by the Confederation of American States, and another owned by the United Canadian and American States. Straight above him, John had figured, was UCAS territory, north of a bad stretch of Denver called the Aurora Warrens. It was a little difficult to tell as GPS did not quite work underground.

"Yo, kid!" John heard someone yell as he reached the heavy door to the place he called home, "Don't ya know it's dangerous to walk around here?" The voice was deep, trying to sound tough and menacing, and distinctly African. It was also the voice of someone John hated having to deal with.

John ignored the man, pressing his thumb to the maglock on the door of his house. At the same time he sent a signal to a second maglock on the inside, using his technomancer abilities to remotely unlock it as well.

A heavy hand slapped down on John's shoulder. "Yo, punk! I's talkin' to ya!"

"Fuck off, nigger." John bit back and shrugged off the hand, "We both know this ain't your turf."

"That's where's you's wrong, kid." the African said. John heard the click of a switchblade. "This is our turf, and you gotta pay up."

"Predictable." John muttered, spinning to sidestep an expected stab. With a practiced twitch of his right arm, a Morrissey Élan holdout pistol in a spring loaded holster popped into his hand. As part of his sidestep, John turned to face the taller African, the holdout was aimed right at his face. He saw two others, all three of them being African human males.

Shaq in particular was looking a little brighter than the others, but it was not in intelligence. In the naturally poor light John was also seeing their body heat, and it looked like Shaq was sweating just a little.

"C'mon Shaq," John said, "we both know T-Bar ain't gonna claim this turf. He does and he's got two other gangs and who knows how many coyotes gunnin' for his ass."

"He don't think it that way." Shaq countered. "And you gotta start coughin' up protection money."

It was a rare moment John wished he did not wear the goggles, and this one was so Shaq could watch John roll his eyes. T-Bar was a smalltime but overly ambitious gang leader with barely more members than a person has fingers, and maybe as many brain cells.

Still holding the holdout at Shaq's face, John squeezed the trigger. Before the other two African gangers could react he shot the one to his left and had the holdout leveled at the third. At least this one was smart enough to put his hands up. The only sound was the whizzing bullets when John shot.

Shaq was out cold, the gel round having hit him in the forehead harder than a heavyweight boxer's glove. The other ganger that had been shot was slowly regaining his feet. Not for the first time John wondered when Shaq would understand that John would shoot a person.

"Take Shaq and get the fuck out of here." John barked at the two gangers.

With a ganger at each side, Shaq was hefted and carried away into the tunnels. John hoped they were smart and went straight to their recognized turf.

The only reason the gangers obeyed was because of what John had done the first time they tried to extract protection money from him. That time had ended with John emptying the magazine of his Morrissey Élan into the gangers as well as kicking one in the crotch a few times and biting the hand of another that tried to hold him. That particular fight had been super lucky for John, and he knew it. It had also ended with the five gangers unconscious in a tunnel rumored to be stalked by ghouls.

Quickly stepping inside, the maglocks secured the door once John closed it behind him.

This was another aspect of John's life that he hated having to deal with. But then, being twelve years old and not being able to wait until he was older was still a common thing for kids.

The night itself was calm. John seriously did not expect Shaq to return for any harassment. He had even considered hacking the go-ganger's commlink for their nuyen to pay for the gel rounds he inevitably had to keep using. The only drawback was that he had actually done that once, but only managed to scrape up enough to by three gel rounds between the four gangers that had pushed him, and he doubted that Shaq had more than five nuyen to his name.

The next afternoon proved to be a little more interesting as John had gotten a message from Tabby about work. The hard part for John was that he had to cover about twenty-five kilometers to get to a place called Club Denim that was at the west side of Denver, in the Pueblo Corporate Council sector.

The first step in getting to Denim was John hitching a ride with a coyote on her run into the CAS sector. From there, John ended up walking across Denver. Not a very pleasant experience, either. On the way he did some research into the club itself. It was after he was done with his research, like where Denim was located, when he managed to hitch another ride with another coyote to get across the border to the PCC side of Denver. Well, hitched was a nice way of saying he hid in the back of a coyote's truck without anyone knowing he was there.

At a stop sign somewhere after surfacing in the PCC side, John hopped out of the back of the pickup truck. From there he would walk to Denim.

Years ago Denim was in what was called the Ute Sector of the Denver Font Range Free Zone, or FRFZ for short. About a kilometer and a half south was the old demarcation line between the Ute and PCC Sectors, though appearance wise now there did not seem to be much difference between the two. The neighborhood in this part of Edgewood was largely residential, the streets relatively quiet of traffic or people. Denim itself stood out largely because of a large neon sign, so it would be relatively hard to miss if you were looking for it. The parking lot for the club was pretty much empty.

John hoped he looked calmer than his insides felt as he pulled the door open. Tribal rock music suddenly went from subtle vibrations to rather loud. That did nothing to settle the butterflies in his stomach.

The inside of Denim smelled of tobacco smoke and alcohol. At various places around there were trid screens showing different sports games, with a few showing local news programs. One of the news channels was doing an article about LuCom, a local computer company. There were a few wageslaves about, nursing their drinks. Behind the bar was a middle aged human woman dressed in traditional Hopi garb, her hair tied in twin braids that she had draped over her shoulders, with dark eyes that glared harshly at John.

"No kids." the bartender barked.

"Fine then." John returned, "But I got an appointment with a Mr. Johnson here. You tell 'im why I missed it."

The bartender did not look convinced.

"I'll watch the kid." came a woman's voice. John noticed a rather attractive blonde woman sitting in a booth. She smiled a little and waved him over. He slid himself onto the bench on the opposite side of the table.

The woman was pretty, looking to be in her early twenties at most, with wavy blonde hair down just past her shoulders tied into a loose ponytail, and deep blue eyes. She was athletic in build, with a slightly above average bust. Her clothing was casual looking with a soft brown leather jacket and not too tight blue jeans, and he noticed that her left hand was cybernetic. As close as he was he could hack into the hand and figure out just how much of her arm was cybernetic. That was, only if she had not turned off the wireless functions of the cybernetics.

"So you're also here to meet with Mr. Johnson?" she asked.

"'Bout all I know." John said. "Work of some kind."

"First time?" she asked.

"Yeah." John answered, looking about. Everyone else seemed to be paying them no mind. Even the bartender had stopped focusing her attention on him. Maybe she now believed that he really was here to meet with a Mr. Johnson, and not try to score some booze?

"It shows a little too much." she told him. "Relax. Usually Johnson gives you some details about the job then a price. You always get a chance to back out and no one'll think less of you for it."

Having been wondering what kind of work it would be had been bugging John off and on. Hearing that he would have an opportunity to not even accept the job if he did not want to was good news. He was hoping it would not be something too disgusting as right now he did not have enough for the bribes for next month's rent.

"So, you got a name?" she asked him, and before John could answer she added, "A street name?"

John had thought about it off and on for a while, and had found in a hardcopy of some ancient science fiction a character that he had found interesting. His online persona even emulated the character's appearance to an extent.

"Cypher." John answered, absently reaching up and running two fingers of his right hand over his right ear.

"Call me Hunter." she replied. "I do bounty hunting for the Denver LEOs from time to time for legit work. But it's not enough to pay the bills sometimes.

"But I think it's time we went to the back room for the meeting." Hunter finished, standing up from the booth.

John followed her, and more than once was looking her up and down. They went to the back of the bar and down a flight of stairs. After going through a solid door the feeling of the place changed dramatically.

The basement room itself made John feel that he was in some kind of ancient Indian medicine lodge. A warm fire burned in the center of the room, venting up through a metal chimney, and was the only source of light. It also obscured John's vision a little. There was also a smell to the air that John could only best describe as warm. Furs and Amerindian artifacts decorated the walls, though John could not tell if they were authentic or merely synthetic replicas. He could not feel any RFID tags in them, but that meant little in the way of telling a fake from authentic relic.

A single person was already in the room, sitting opposite of the door. John figured it was Mr. Johnson, as the person wore a gray business suit but also a raven styled mask that John thought was probably the only piece of real wood in the whole club.

Mr. Johnson said nothing, but gestured to John and Hunter to take a seat. They both sat at Mr. Johnson's right.

They all sat in silence for a few minutes, waiting for the others to arrive. To occupy himself, John had taken to feeling out the wireless signals. Both Hunter and Mr. Johnson had simple commlinks that were easy to find. While Mr. Johnson's commlink was nothing but a simple piece of electronics with little in the way of valuable info, Hunter's commlink was subscribed to a higher end link that John had not noticed.

With nothing better to do, John had slipped his way into Hunter's second commlink. The interior sculpting looked like he had materialized inside the cockpit of a fighter jet or some kind of small space ship. Touching various icons that looked like controls or displays brought up various details about her cybernetics and more. He found that her left arm was fully cybernetic with the commlink itself in it, as well as a nanohive and a grapple hand system. Her lower right arm was also listed, a very well disguised synthetic limb with a light pistol concealed within it. A central icon showed heavily tricked out cybernetic eyes, and an icon just below that held a list of skillsofts for a high quality skillwire system running throughout her body. He did not linger long when he noticed a roaming intrusion countermeasure program floating about the inside of the virtual fighter.

After having to wait a while, another person entered the room. Though he looked human enough his appearance unnerved John, sporting enough chrome to polish a car. He was barefoot though his feet were cybernetic, as were his hands. His head was clean shaven to allow free clearance of an eyeband to wrap around his head. He wore black leather pants and a matching coat that mostly covered a white shirt underneath, which gave John the impression the man was a biker of some kind. This did not mean the man was a go-ganger, but it was still a possibility.

With as much cyberware as that man was sporting, John felt it might be a stupid thing to not try probing for a commlink or some other device to hack. He barely hid his smile when he found one on the man's left forearm and a second implanted in his right arm. Ignoring the worn commlink with a soap bubble for a firewall, John went straight to poking the firmer firewall for weaknesses.

Just behind the cybernetic man was the largest woman John had ever seen. Not large as in corpulent, but very, very tall. She stood nearly a meter taller than John's one and a half meter body, with wavy blond hair past her shoulders, and brown eyes. He almost thought she was a troll because of the large curling ram horns growing from her head, but she lacked the disproportionately long arms, rough skin, and other typical troll physical features. Her skin looked rather smooth and soft, almost like that of a supermodel. She certainly had the hips and bust of a supermodel, and despite looking like she grew up well to do her clothing spoke volumes about knowing about life in the harder parts of town. John had to fix himself to sit more comfortably as she sat down, his jeans suddenly feeling rather tight.

By the time she sat down at her own spot John had broken through the firewall of the bald cyborg's better commlink, and was poking around with what he could find. And a lot of it was already pretty dumb. The sculpting inside looked like a biker bar drawn by a six-year-old, and various icons gave very simplified information on what they were about.

"Now that we are all here," Mr. Johnson said as soon as the large woman had taken her seat, "let's get down to business." By the sound of his voice, John figured that Mr. Johnson was an elderly man who was probably in his mid to late sixties.

"Thank you all for coming. I'm Mr. Johnson, and the job at hand is rather straightforward, and hopefully simple."

"At least you're not saying it'll be easy." the large woman said. Even her voice sounded as attractive as her body looked. Now if only there wasn't the big mouthed, ugly, biker wanna-be with them.

"For your sake I hope it is." Mr. Johnson told her, "But I have no illusions that you'll have some trouble."

"So what's the job?" Hunter asked.

"Delivery." Mr. Johnson told them, "You must deliver a package in the strictest of confidence to a friend in the UCAS sector by seven o'clock tonight."

"Two and a half hours, two borders, and rush hour." the woman rattled off. "It won't be easy."

"Compensation will be three thousand, five hundred nuyen," Mr. Johnson told them, "as long as you make the delivery on time."

"Three and a half to be a delivery boy?" the bald man asked. His voice sounded deep, gravelly, and like he might be a bit low in the brains department. For what might have been the first time John wished he really could hack into peoples' brains. Maybe if he could do that then maybe their IQ would be accessible like the speed of a commlink's collective processors?

Something snapped in John. Thirty-five hundred nuyen would cover his rent for a few months, with more than enough to spare for the ammo he kept spending on shooting Shaq and his lackeys every few days.

"Can't accept the promotion to delivery boy?" John asked.

"Like you can?" the bald man asked.

"Hell yeah if it means work." John returned. "You can count me in. As long as I can get a ride."

"Got a truck outside." the woman said, "Got room for all and then some."

"Yeah, alright, I'm in." the cybernetic man added grudgingly.

"Got my own bike outside." Hunter told them, "I'll ride escort."

"Good." Mr. Johnson said, pulling out a large manila envelope that had CONFIDENTIAL in big red letters across one side and a tamper proof seal. Whatever was inside, it did not seem to be too solid as the envelope sagged a little in his hand.

"This's it?" the woman asked, picking up the envelope.

Mr. Johnson nodded. "You need to deliver this to 4923 Billings Street, in the Montbello District."

"Should be easy enough to get through customs." the bald man said.

"Uh, don't forget about rush hour." John told him.

"Who the fuck are you to…" the man snapped, stopping when his commlink beeped.

John, not having cut his connection to the cyborg's commlink, faked the incoming call and was already uploading a program of his own, an Augmented Reality Editor program called a Negator from the commlink in his goggles. By the time the man figured out there was no call, John had the program up and running under his control, hiding its small icon almost inside one of the childishly huge icons that decorated the inside of the biker's commlink.

"Piece of shit." the man cussed as he hit his commlink a few times. Looking up, he asked, "Where'd the fuck he go?"

"Who?" the large woman asked.

"The kid!"

Hunter looked over at John, who shrugged back to her, then back to the other woman. "I don't know what you're on, but he's still sitting right here."

Even the other woman was perplexed. "Yeah, he's still here."

"The hell he is!" the man cried out, standing as if he was going to jump over the fire to where he thought John was.

Mr. Johnson started laughing.

John brought a hand up to his goggles, then he closed the Negator program. John made sure the first thing he saw was the middle finger of his right hand as the AROs in Billy's vision cleared.

Mr. Johnson was still laughing, harder even when he noticed the expression on the man's face.

"I hacked your 'link when you came in." John told them, "I made you think you got a call, and hacked your eye. It's too easy. Especially the way you got everything strung up and all." And that did not include a lack of software to give him a chance at even finding John in the first place.

Mr. Johnson had finally gotten control of himself, his laughter ending. "And here I had asked for an okay cyber fighter." he cried, "And she comes through with the Michelangelo of the matrix! Wonderful!" He clapped his hands together happily.

"I still don't see why we need him." the man declared, sitting back down again.

John sighed, rolling his eyes behind the dark lenses of his goggles.

"I hope you have a comeback to that." Mr. Johnson told him.

John, still within the other man's commlink and cybernetics, strung various icons into a central icon of his own for control. He took over the move by wire system in the man's body and all of his implanted weapons, overriding their direct neural inputs. First the climbing claws extended from his toes, and the man's fingers were locked straight and wide. Next came the retracted spurs in his forearms, the three blades in each forearm popping out lightning quick.

Last was the move by wire system as John made it go haywire by forcing every muscle in his body to try and contract. The man's movements made John think of what an animal might look if it was being electrocuted.

With a thought, John let go of everything he had control of in the man's body, his own icon disappearing from existence.

The cybernetic man, panting, faced John. Without actually seeing any eyeballs it was hard for John to tell if he was being stared at. At least he now had an idea of how others felt when he was looking at them as his goggles blocked his eyes from the outside.

"At least you don't have full cyberlegs." John said, "Would've had you dance us a jig."

Again Mr. Johnson broke out into laughter. Even the large woman started laughing this time. John noticed the smirk on Hunter's face, and he smiled a little. Did she also wink at him?

John scrambled to his feet when it looked like the cybernetic man was going to lunge at him. Only after he had gained his footing and found his back pressed against the wall did he realize he had moved too slow. At least the large woman had, with an arm out blocking the cybernetic man's path.

And apparently the tall woman had figured something out, saying, "He'd be good in case someone hacks my truck to stop it."

"And maybe you should cut the WiFi to that internal link." John advised as he sat back down, "Or maybe slave your cheap 'link to it to hide it like she does." John pointed to Hunter.

"What?" Hunter asked. Her cheery expression was gone in an instant.

By the look on the man's face, this was also something that had never crossed his mind.

"Yes!" Mr. Johnson cried, "He can be taught!"

"How'd you…?" Hunter started to ask.

"Already hacked you, too." John told her. "Bugged out when I saw your ice."

"Hopefully we can stop wasting our time here." the larger woman told everyone as she stood, "We barely got two hours to make two borders, and then some."

"I do have some associates who can help." Mr. Johnson told them.

"I think it'd be a good idea." Hunter said.

The bald cyborg made a 'pfft' noise. "We don't need help."

No one else said anything. John thought it would be a good idea to skip under the borders.

Mr. Johnson passed two labeled notes over to Hunter. "Commcodes and notes to give to the two. Stalker can get you into CAS, Peaches into UCAS."

"Thanks." Hunter told him, nodding.

John stood to leave, as did the others. He was the last one up the stairs.

"First run, kid?" the cybernetic man asked as they walked towards the front door.

"Yeah." John answered halfheartedly.

"Hope you're good for something besides hacking." the cybernetic man replied. Was he strutting as he headed towards the door? John was already starting to dislike this guy, and he was starting to smell something he had not before.

John heard something or someone behind him. What was said was a little hard to tell, like trying to understand what a falling-down drunk man is trying to say when he's screaming at the top of his lungs. The loud tribal rock music playing did not help either.

A heavy hand slapped down hard on John's left shoulder. "Fookin' dwarf." he heard a man say, and could smell the alcohol as if he had fallen into a vat of beer. "I'z talkin'…"

Shrugging off the shoulder, John tried to just ignore the drunk wageslave and walk off.

"Hey!" the wageslave yelled, slapping his hand back on John's shoulder again.

Again John shrugged the man off, adding, "Fuck off." He noticed the cybernetic man turning to face them, though it did not look like John was going to get any help.

"Naw, fook yuz!" the drunk wageslave yelled, grabbing John's shoulder again and forcing him around.

John twitched his right hand, catching the holdout. As he looked up at drunk man he shot him in the gut, the suppressed gel round was impossible to hear over the loud music. John managed to step back as the drunk toppled over in pain as if he had been punched in the gut by a troll. The holdout slid back up his sleeve.

Kneeling down, John yelled into the drunk's ear at point blank, "I'm not a fuckin' dwarf!" He stood and turned to leave, and had to step around the cybernetic man.

No one stopped him as he left the bar.

"Over here!" the woman called out when she noticed John, waving. She stood next to a dark green Toyota Gopher pickup truck that had been modified for a large metahuman to drive. "Where's Billy?" she asked.

"Who?" John asked back.

"The cyclops guy."

"Yo." the cybernetic man said, stepping up.

"Hey, Cypher!" Hunter called as she rode up, "Think you can network us together so we can talk on the road?" She was riding an electric blue Contrail Thundercloud that rumbled with more power than it looked she could handle. She was also wearing a matching electric blue helmet.

"Sure." John told them, and took a moment to grab everyone's commlink signals and mentally pulled them to the commlink built into his goggles. It accepted the data streams into a network with him as a server. He was not quite sure how it worked, but all he really cared about was that it worked. "We're linked up." he told everyone, holding the door for Billy.

"You take the middle." Billy said with no subtlety of malice in his voice.

"You get carsick?" John asked.

"No."

"Well, I don't know if I do." John told him. "If I do it's in your lap." As far as John knew, he had never ridden in the cab of a truck at all.

"Alright." Billy relented.

"So where do we go off to first?" the woman asked.

"Sloan Lake Park." Hunter answered, securing her helmet. "We'll meet Stalker there. Traffic report's're saying there's long lines at the border checkpoints."

It was about fifteen minutes from Denim to Sloan Lake. Along the way they got to introductions, and John learned that the large woman called herself Valkyrie.

Valkyrie was not exactly a troll, John found out, but a metavariant of troll called fomori that was native to the British Isles. As they rode, John did an extensive search on fomori in general, learning a lot about the differences between them and trolls. He also found that, despite not having the protective dermal deposits trolls have, fomori were supposed to be as good, if not better, at taking hits as trolls. He even learned about their innate resistance to magic, and John figured she would be good for taking down mages.

Stalker was already waiting for them at the park when they arrived. He was human, looking to be about in his forty's, with fading red hair. He stood a good hundred and ninety centimeters, and probably weighed more than twice what John did. Looking at his gear, John would have guessed him for a street samurai, a runner who specialized in up close and personal combat on jobs like what John was on now.

"Which one of you's Hunter?" Stalker asked gruffly.

"Here." Hunter answered, walking up to Stalker and handing him a note.

Stalker grumbled as he looked over the note. "Alright." he growled, pocketing the note, "Follow me, and bring your rigs."

They were led to a concealed tunnel in the park. From there, Stalker hopped up on the back of Valkyrie's truck, and with him added to their little network gave directions through the tunnels.

Though the others soon grew bored of Stalker, especially with being called kids all of the time, John was honestly interested in the coyote's stories. Though being called a kid himself did make him feel a little insulted, he could hardly blame Stalker for it. John was, after all, easily young enough to really be Stalker's own kid.

The thought had actually crossed John's mind. Problem was that he had no feelings like he should know Stalker or not, and decided he should just forget it. It did help too that John had blonde hair, closer in shade to what Hunter and Valkyrie had.

But both women also felt like complete strangers.

About twenty minutes later, and at least one stop in the middle of the tunnels later, they surfaced somewhere in the middle of Cheesman Park. There Stalker left them. John was glad at this point, having grown weary of Stalker's "In my day" stories.

Cheesman Park was in the northern part of what was formerly the Aztlan Sector of Denver. From what research John had done about Denver's history, Aztechnology's presence in the city had all been wiped out the year Ghostwalker came and claimed the FRFZ as his own. With Aztechnology gone, the sector had been added to the CAS's territory. Much of the Aztlan influence still could be seen, particularly around the park, and partially going east until you crossed Colorado Boulevard, which had marked the old Aztlan-CAS demarcation.

John watched out the window as Valkyrie tried her best to get to the next border crossing to get into the UCAS sector. Absently he rubbed his fingers over the curve of his right ear.

Ultimately they hit a snarl and wound up stuck in a traffic jam about half way to the border.

"Fuck an A." cussed Billy.

With nothing better to do, John dove into the GridGuide to see what the local road reports had to say. The public camera feeds showed a tangled mess between two sedans at an intersection that was in their path.

"Wonder if that'll make World's Dumbest." commented John, forwarding the camera feeds to the others. "Looks like someone was trying to drive their car before they knew how."

"Like you could do better." countered Billy.

"Yeah, I could." John returned. "I'd let the car do all the driving."

"Check six, guys." Hunter called out. "Four Yaks footin' it up."

"And four Triads from the side." added Valkyrie.

John half stood to turn around and look back. It was easy enough to spot what he thought were the Yaks, as Hunter called them. He saw four Japanese humans walking towards them, wearing the stereotypical black suits and black sunglasses. If there were any extraterrestrials about John would have thought they were the Men In Black.

Getting a bad vibe from the others was making him nervous. "Not good, eh?" he asked.

"Nope." Valkyrie answered. "The Triads got a mage with them, too."

"The troll?" Hunter asked.

"Yep." Valkyrie answered.

John thought he would try to do something first and let his mind sink a little more into the web work of data signals. The area was a mess of WiFi and nodes, and trying to sniff out nodes of specific cars and trucks was proving to be a little difficult. Especially when it seemed that almost everyone used the factory generic node sculpting for their cars.

At least he was able to find one of the car nodes he wanted, quickly forced his virtual hand through its firewall. Not only did the car not respond, a jet black Nightsky limousine behind them started blaring its horn rather loudly and flashing all of its lights. This apparently startled the Yakuza as their attention turned to the limo behind them.

"You doing this Cypher?" Hunter asked.

"Tried to run the Triads over. Guess I got the wrong car." John answered, still trying to figure out the nodes to the cars. It was not too easy trying to pick out the right one as how he felt the presence of the cars through the matrix did not precisely coincide with their physical locations.

Before John could decide on the next car to try and hack, he heard what sounded like popcorn exploding behind him.

"What the fuck's happening?" Valkyrie asked, turning back to better see what was going on.

"Shootout!" Hunter called back. Through the video feed from Hunter's motorcycle John saw that she had driven up onto the sidewalk and was now beside them. Glancing around he also saw more people diving for cover.

A crashing sound ahead of them drew John's attention to the street ahead. Despite the congested traffic, people were apparently trying to drive away from the gunfight. It did look like a path might be available.

"Go! Go! Go!" John yelled at Valkyrie.

"What?" Valkyrie asked, and in turning around to face John noticed the moving traffic.

The truck seemed to leap into motion, and Valkyrie followed two other cars onto the sidewalk. After half a block she was able to turn to a side street that was less congested. A few blocks further, Valkyrie turned again and the street was clear. John then pulled his mind from web of data and back to the real world.

"I could've taken 'em." muttered Billy.

"Sure." Valkyrie said flatly. It sounded like to John that she did not believe Billy. He sure did not.

They traveled on in silence for several more minutes.

"Got a howl." Hunter told them over the network, "Head for Havana and Sixth."

At the intersection of Havana and Sixth Avenue was a dilapidated parking garage, among the other buildings. Standing nearby was an ork woman with fiery bright orange hair pulled in a curly jumbled ponytail. She wore a chameleon suit, making it difficult to see what else she wore or happened to be carrying. Once she saw them she waved them inside, opening a rusted chain link gate for them.

Hunter drove in first, and after exchanging a few words handed her a note.

Like Stalker, Peaches ended up hopping up into the bed of Valkyrie's truck to ride behind the cab. John also added her commlink to their network.

They were well into the tunnels when Billy asked, "Been wondering something. Just how'd you do all that? It didn't look like you went to VR, and you weren't gesturing around with AROs."

John tapped the straps to his goggles. "Trode net." he said. "Makes a direct link to my 'link, so all I gotta do is think it."

"What's that noise?" Hunter asked, butting into the conversation.

John could not hear it right away, but after a bit he could hear country western music . To John it was a lot of noise made by sour singing and tin strung guitars.

"That's Five By Five." Peaches told them. "Smuggler bar in an old fallout shelter from the mid twentieth."

"There's shit that old down here?" Billy asked.

"Well, that's the rumor." Peaches confessed. "Supposedly there's a whole tunnel system and bunches of nuke shelters that were built deep underground over a century ago."

John did not say it but he now suspected his own place was one of those fallout shelters. It made sense, especially when part of the tunnel they traveled down he used to walk between his place and a ladder he sometimes used to reach the surface.

Further on, and well past Five By Five or the tunnel to John's place were more tunnels that John was not familiar with. Here and there were homeless people either sitting along the walls or shuffling along.

Then John saw something he had hoped he would never see. Several ghouls had cornered a few vagrants, while many others were running off. It was a sad fact in the modern world.

"We gotta help them." Valkyrie told them.

John noticed that some of the ghouls had actually turned to face them. He figured they heard the vehicles coming.

Hunter did not say anything. John watched as she pulled out a gun and shot at a ghoul. "Shit, they're all feral!" she cussed.

Valkyrie stopped her truck short, and John was quick to bail out. Though he was more than willing to help, he also wanted to make sure that Billy did not just shove him to the ground.

"Yes!" Billy half yelled, half growled as he very nearly did plow John over in leaping out of the truck.

Faster of foot than John, Billy was the next to reach the ghouls. His forearm blades snapped out just before he proceeded to slice one ghoul after another. John was quite content to stay back and out of the reach of the ghouls.

Billy turned out good for something after all. Saying the cyborg was skilled depended on whether he was trying to punch, kick, or slash at a ghoul. There were a few overly zealous "kiya's" and other martial artists noises, but only when Billy actually tried to slash a ghoul with the spurs in his arms did it look like he knew what he was doing.

John shivered when he saw Billy completely gut a ghoul by stabbing and tearing his spurs out at the sides did John figure it might have been a bit of a bad idea to make Billy twitch like a dead frog on electrodes.

At least Billy proved to be a good distraction, and at least a threat to the ghouls as they turned on him. "Go! Go! Go!" John yelled at the homeless people, waving them to run towards Valkyrie's truck.

John heard a girl scream, and saw a ghoul not distracted by Billy had managed to grab someone and was towering over his fallen prey. With both holdouts in hand, John unloaded the magazines of both into the ghoul. At least one shot looked like it hit, knocking the ghoul back onto its buttocks.

Not knowing if the ghoul was dead or just knocked out, John rushed up to the girl, letting the holdouts slide back into their holsters. As soon as he was at her side he grabbed the girl and pull her away. They managed to get clear, and the girl ran for her mother's arms. John stopped close by, bending over as he tried to catch his breath.

There was some more gunfire, and even what sounded like an explosion. Then silence.

"Everyone alright?" Hunter called out.

John turned to look back at the fight. There were easily half a dozen dead ghouls, some of them now burning and spewing a greasy black smoke. It looked like the others were alright.

"No." Billy said. "Too fuckin' fast."

John figured Billy was alright.

"I'll be fine. Pushed that spell a little hard." Valkyrie panted.

"I'm fine." John told them, walking back over to Valkyrie's truck. He saw Peaches still standing in the back of the truck with a Colt America L36 in hand, the pistol's barrel glowing warm to his thermographic vision.

Billy climbed into the truck before John, and John was able to check in the side mirror to see the homeless people heading off in the opposite direction.

"They should be okay." Peaches told them, "But we shouldn't hang around here. More ghouls will probably show up."

"Why's that?" Billy asked.

"If a ghoul's desperate enough, it'll eat the flesh of a dead ghoul." Peaches told them.

John shivered at the thought.

Valkyrie started up her truck and they continued on. John took the opportunity to change out the empty holdout magazines for loaded ones. Once that was done, John sent a message to a fence he knew by the name of Merlin to see about getting some more ammo. He never kept much in the way of ammunition, and if he ended up emptying these magazines he would be completely out.

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful, though John did learn that Valkyrie was indeed a magician. From Billy's complaining about wanting a better fight, John figured he was just a whiny bitch.

Once at the surface in the UCAS sector Peaches left them.

They rode on in silence for about half an hour when Billy said what might have been the dumbest thing possible.

"Looks like it'll be easy after all."

"Please tell me you're joking." Hunter said with all dead seriousness.

"I mean it." Billy said.

That was when Valkyrie's truck decided to just up and die. Valkyrie was able to steer the Gopher into a parking space.

"Now you've done it." Hunter said, parking her motorcycle in front of the truck.

All at once their commlinks beeped with an incoming message, and right away an ARO appeared. It read, "Come on over for a quick drink. We need to talk." Along with it was a man's face. He was Caucasian, with short brown hair, blue eyes, and a half smile on his face John could not figure out.

"I don't like this." Hunter said softly. "Cypher, check the café."

Looking off to the right, John saw they were parked next to a wine bar called Cava De Vin. He guessed it was Italian, but had no idea what the name meant. But what he also saw was the owner of the face in the ARO.

"I'll go talk to him." Hunter said, with a click he heard her mute her connection.

"So we just sit here?" whined Billy.

"You can go lie down in the back if you want." Valkyrie answered.

John said nothing as he reached out with his mind, feeling for the WiFi signals again. Compared to the pressure and congestion of the traffic jam earlier, this neighborhood felt barren of nodes and more. By the time Hunter had reached the man John had identified a single signal from him and was already applying a virtual hand to the commlink's firewall. He was through in a few seconds without incident. First thing he did was hijack the commlink's microphone.

"It really isn't any of your business at all." he heard Hunter say.

"True, but it's not like I'm asking you to open it and show me." the man said.

John noticed an icon inside the man's commlink that was showing a complete readout of Valkyrie's truck. "I think I can get us going again." he said, hoping Hunter could still hear him.

"What're you talking about?" Billy asked.

John just waved him off, focusing more to how things were inside the man's commlink. It did not look like there were any other subscriptions.

"Maybe, but I think we'll be going instead." Hunter said. Maybe she did hear him.

With a virtual hand on the icon John sent a pulse of corruptive data at it. It shattered like glass as the program crashed.

"You really think that'll be possible?" the man asked.

"Try it now." John said.

Valkyrie's engine roared to life.

"I think so." Hunter replied, turning to walk back to her motorcycle.

"Hey, c'mon!" the man cried.

Hunter stopped, drawing a large pistol and leveling it straight at his head.

"I see you're in a hurry, we'll talk more next time!" he quickly said as rushed off. John cut his connection to the man's commlink.

Shaking her head, Hunter walked back to her motorcycle. "Let's get going." she said.

They traveled mostly north now, though had to switch back and around a few times because of the layout of the streets. If it were not for maps and GPS John felt they would have been completely lost.

It was just after 18.30 when they reached their destination.

The address was behind a wrought iron gate and an extended driveway, and Hunter drove up to an intercom.

"I feel way underdressed just being here." John muttered. The whole neighborhood was looking so upper class that visions of people walking around with their noses up in the air filled his imagination.

The gate buzzed as it opened. "Follow me in, slow." Hunter told them over their network as she drove through the gate. The driveway was not straight, but wound back and forth through a grove of trees.

John could feel the suppression of WiFi from the property's security as signals crisscrossed all over the place. He even spotted a few security cameras mounted in the trees, and sense the signals of many more as they traveled back and forth to a security node somewhere on the property.

That was about when John received a text message from Hunter. It said: "Do be on your best behavior and don't hack into anything here." He figured it would be a good idea to follow her advice.

It was not just a house that they pulled up to, but a full blown mansion. There were four Hispanic men at the front steps to greet them, each dressed in a poorly tailored, off the rack suits. One of them approached Hunter while John and the others got out of the truck.

"I'm Michael." he said, introducing himself. "Sottocapo Omar Chavez is expecting you, but currently involved with a meeting downstairs. He'll appreciate it if you join him there. If you'll follow me?"

Following their lead, John said nothing as Hunter merely nodded and fell in step behind Michael. John noticed the other three men following along with.

The mansion itself was luxurious to say the least, though John did not quite get as good a look from the foyer that he would have hoped.

Just before they reached a grand staircase, Michael led them through a doorway. John figured it was a sitting room of some kind, but in following Michael and the others was soon walking through another doorway and down a set of stairs.

"Some things to be aware of." Michael told them as they walked down a hallway. "First, speak only when spoken to, and wait for sottocapo Chavez to address you first."

The next door led into a shooting range, with two people already inside. One was an elderly man that looked so skinny and frail that he needed the cane he was leaning against to keep from falling over with the Ruger Super Warhawk he wore in his shoulder holster.

The other person was a skinny elf male, his white shirt soaked with sweat and ripped badly in several places.

Omar Chavez handed the elf a target. "Take it down there and hang it." he told the elf.

John watched as the elf seemed to sweat even more as he walked down the range. Omar pulled his Warhawk and took a bead on the elf's back. John felt he was ignoring them intentionally. Looking at the others, he saw none of them making any move to stop Omar, or to even say anything about it. Probably most disturbing to him was Billy's grin as he mimicked Omar, making his left hand look like a pistol as he too took aim at the elf's head.

The elf made it to the end of the range, hung the target, and stepped aside. Then the sottocapo fired at the target. John shuddered with each retort of the powerful Warhawk.

After the sixth shot, Omar placed his revolver on the counter and turned to face John and the others. "Now," he said gruffly, "I understand you have a package for me?"

"Yes, we do." Valkyrie said, pulling out the manila envelope and handing it to him.

Omar took the envelope and looked it over. Apparently satisfied that everything was okay, he said, "Everything is in order."

John heard his commlink beep. When he looked at it, he noticed thirty-five hundred nuyen had just been transferred to his account.

"Michael will see you to the door." Omar said.

Michael merely gestured for John and the others. The walk back to the front door was just as quiet.

"So what do we do now?" John asked as soon as they were outside.

"We pretty much go our separate ways." Valkyrie said.

"I could use a ride if you're goin' to Goodfriends." he heard Billy say.

"You can get a cab." Valkyrie told him.

John figured now was a good time to cut off the network. Mentally he took the data lines from his commlink and cast them off.

Once that was set, John brought up a GridGuide map to figure a way home. It looked like it was going to be quite a walk for him. Without a word, John started walking down the driveway. Valkyrie passed him on the way, long before he reached the gate.

The evening was starting to grow cold when John reached the street. Following the GridGuide map, John turned to his right and started walking down the street.

Hunter showed up a few minutes later and started pacing him on the street. "You need a ride, kiddo?" she asked.

John said nothing.

"I doubt you live anywhere near here." Hunter told him, "Hop on. I'll give you a lift to wherever you need."

John stopped, pausing for a moment before turning to look at Hunter. "Why're you doing this?" he asked, "You want something?"

"I don't want anything." Hunter told him, "And I kinda got a soft spot for kids."

John grimaced.

"No, no!" Hunter cried, "Not what you're thinking. It's just that… I kinda feel sorry for kids down on their luck. I just wanna help you out, a little."

Looking down at his feet, John thought about Hunter's offer, absently rubbing his right ear.

"Yeah, sure." John said, "But if you try anything I'll fuck your cybernetics."

Hunter chuckled, but said nothing as John climbed onto her motorcycle behind her.

"So, where to?" she asked.


	2. Run 02 : Best Served Cold

Run 02 : Best Served Cold (based on the mission written by Stephen McQuillan; updated 2013/05/07)

The days passed quietly. There were times when John thought he was going to get something to do again, and instead turned to studying a few tutorsoft programs he had managed to pick up by less than legal ways.

It was the middle of the day when his commlink started beeping with a call. Out of boredom of something to do, John answered the call almost right away. Just as he had hit the 'Talk' icon, he noticed the call was coming from Tabby.

A feline face showed up on the commlink. "We're burning daylight kid," Tabby said quickly, "and I've got a Johnson who's getting back in the game. His name's Falcone, and he needs a team out at his ranch in four hours. From what I've heard it's just some cleanup work so pack light and get moving."

"Yeah, sure!" John said excitedly. Though her words suggested something boring, he had already learned that work in the shadows was hardly boring.

His commlink beeped with a file upload from Tabby, and John accepted it. It was a map plot from his location, if he was on the street, to a place called the Horse Trot Ranch.

"Be there at six." Tabby said, "And you don't wanna be late." Her face disappeared from his commlink.

John cussed to himself. The distance he had to cover meant that he had to leave now. He hoped he might have a chance to hack a taxi on the way.

Through one of the access tunnels he knew about, John was soon on the surface streets.

"Hey, kid!" John heard someone call as he walked down the street. Wondering if it was directed at him, he looked up to see who was yelling.

It was Hunter as she pulled up next to him on her motorcycle. She slowed to keep pace with him as he kept on walking.

"You got a job?" she asked, "Or are you out for an afternoon stroll?"

"Work at a ranch." John told her, not quite sure how much he should say.

"Horse Trot?" she asked him. "Got a call for there too. If that's the place, hop on. Can even stop for food, too, so you don't have to eat on the run."

John took three steps before he noticed she had stopped. Figuring she was on the level, he walked back and climbed onto the motorcycle behind her. She had, after all, given him a ride the week before and had made no effort to follow him into the tunnels.

They rode on in silence, stopping to hit up a Street Pizza stand for some food. After a meal of two greasy slices of pizza and a half liter of cola they continued on. After passing under Stapleton Airport's runways, a few minutes later they reached the checkpoint just north of the I-270 and highway 85/6 cloverleaf to enter the Sioux sector. The UCAS border was marked by a six meter high wall made of plascrete, and was topped with razorwire, monowire, and bristling with a variety of sensors. The border guards barely gave them a look as they were let through with the rest of the traffic, passing underneath a large archway that stretched over I-270 just before the highway 85/6 onramp.

Once over the cloverleaf and past the northern on/off ramps for I-270 there was a similar six meter high wall, though it looked less impressive without the razorwire or plethora of sensors. Like at the UCAS border checkpoint they passed underneath an archway that stretched across the highway, though they got more of an evil eye from the Sioux guards they did nothing.

The rest of the trip, mostly heading north, was quiet and uneventful.

Tabby certainly was not kidding when she said the job was at a ranch. The smell of horses and hay wafted across the afternoon air despite the smell of exhaust from Hunter's motorcycle.

The stretch of land north of Denver that made up the Horse Trot Ranch was by no means the same as it was at the turn of the century. The ranch itself started at East 120th Avenue and ran north to East 144th Avenue along Washington Street, and pushed a kilometer and a half east towards Colorado Boulevard. More than a hundred homes, the streets within, and more had been wiped away for a carefully sculpted and tended landscape to look like naturally untouched rolling hills. It was not like there would have been a lot of people to complain about the destruction of a few neighborhoods if the area had been hit by the VITAS plagues about fifty years ago.

About the only land features that remained from what was once a stretch of suburbia were the two lakes near the center of the ranch.

For John, there was no sense of familiarity from the ranch or the lay of the land. Even the smell of the hay, as nice as it was, held no familiar feel to him. John figured he had never been to the country or a ranch of any kind in the twelve years of his forgotten life.

Valkyrie was already there, having driven her pickup truck there. John and Hunter exchanged pleasantries. A few minutes later Billy arrived on foot, grumbling.

It was precisely 18.00 when the doors to one of the smaller stables opened and a human stepped out. He looked Arabic to John, with short cut black hair and swarthy skin.

The man waved to John and the others, motioning for them to come over.

Once they were close enough so no one would have to yell, the he said, "I am Hafiz. Come, my friends. Mr. Jaron will be speaking with you in the rear stables." He turned and led them to the back of the stables.

Jaron Falcone was seated in a stainless steel wheelchair. "Thank you all for coming." he said, "I apologize if I am short with you, but time is of the essence right now. A package dear to my business was forcefully removed from the ranch earlier this morning. Your job is going to be to retrieve said package and return it to me. I'll pay you each one thousand now, and six thousand more when you are done."

"Seven thousand?" Billy asked, sounding genuinely insulted.

"I'm in." John said without hesitation. Considering it was twice what he got paid last week he wondered if next week's job was going to pay fourteen thousand.

"I'll take the job." Valkyrie said.

"C'mon, we can do better than chump change." whined Billy.

"Not with negotiation skills like that." Hunter said sharply. "Count me in too."

"Afraid you can't get more?" Billy asked.

"If you like, Hafiz can show you to the gate and I'll pay the others your share." Jaron said rather sternly. John noticed a stone cold glare from the older man that sent a shiver down his spine.

Billy actually looked cowed by the paraplegic in the wheelchair. It was surprising considering that Billy probably weighed more than Jaron Falcone, Hafiz, and the wheelchair combined.

"Good." Jaron said, paying them the one thousand nuyen retainer. "Now so you can do your job.

"The package is Jonathan Belenkiy, a mid-level executive with Ares in charge of the R&D department for personal arms and armor." An image file of Jonathan was provided.

"We've already examined the security footage." Jaron told them, "It's clear that three women, elves or humans, entered the grounds just before five o'clock this morning. They were all wearing light body armor and tribal masks. We didn't know Belenkiy was missing until we got the ransom demands at nine o'clock.

"Around eight thirty this morning," Jaron continued, "the security host was hacked. Security protocols kept the footage from getting deleted."

This struck John as odd. He wondered why the team's hacker would have broke into the node almost four hours after the kidnapping instead of having already broken in before to nullify the security before the other three even got there. At this point, John said nothing. Especially because Jaron was still talking.

"The ransom note itself also said that if I don't pay, they will not only kill Belenkiy but also spread the word around that I chose to let the executive die."

"And I doubt Ares would do any more business with you after that." Hunter said.

"Precisely." Jaron said sharply. "That's why I'll give you each a bonus of one thousand if you figure out who the blackmailer is."

"How're you to pay him?" John asked.

"The money goes to an account in the Zurich Orbital Bank." Jaron told them, "and is due by 9am tomorrow morning."

"I think that's good for a start." Hunter said, "Can we take a look at his room?"

"Of course." Jaron said, "I expected you might, so it's been sealed since we found him missing. Hafiz has a key and can show you there."

No one spoke as Hafiz guided them through a twisting path to Belenkiy's room, which was one of several in what appeared to be a small, one level, cookie cutter apartment building. There was an audible click as Hafiz disabled the door's lock for the team.

At first John thought there was nothing wrong as he stepped past Hafiz into the room. Then he remembered that the room was supposed to have been occupied by a corporate executive. To him that meant the room should have been as neat as a pin, whatever that meant.

The room was a complete mess. Drawers were pulled out and clothes strewn everywhere, and the mess continued into the bathroom as well, with the contents of Belenkiy's toiletry bag spilled across the counter.

There was also a lingering smell in the air that John found odd.

"Patchouli." Valkyrie said, walking towards the bathroom. "Stuff reeks."

John walked around the room, but he really had no idea what to look for. Only Valkyrie seemed to dislike the smell of patchouli, and he really could not find anything wrong with it. It was not long until he felt a signal from a device. He traced it to a pocket watch that was sitting on the nightstand. Next to the pocket watch was a stylized pair of glasses.

"Knife in the wall. Nice." commented Billy.

"Anyone find anything else?" asked Hunter.

"Nothin'." Billy said, sounding disappointed.

John handled the pocket watch, looking it over. "Yeah, a commlink." he told them. "It's been shut down, though." There was an odd sensation from it as it pinged him. When he replied to the ping it seemed to rebuke him.

"Nothing much else here." Valkyrie said as she stepped out of the bathroom. Only now did John notice that the room, though not properly built for someone of Valkyrie's size, was not entirely too small for a troll either.

"Try hacking it." Hunter said, "Might be something useful inside."

"I dunno." John said hesitantly as he sat down on the bed. "It keeps pinging me like it's wanting something. I hack it I might fuck it up."

"What's the worst that can happen?" Hunter asked.

"Okay." John said softly as he relaxed on the bed and let his mind sink into the virtual world.

Belenkiy's commlink looked like a geodesic orb of gold plates floating in the gray void of the matrix. Not liking the look of the firewall, John called up some help to break through.

First was a data sprite, a kind of semi-intelligent bot program that he had compiled and registered earlier that week. It was with a few beeps that the sprite faded into existence. It looked like a human skull, but without a jawbone. Instead of an empty right eye socket was a cybernetic camera with a red lens. It had a single manipulator claw extending from the left socket of the jawbone, and where the spinal cord would come from were half four mechadendrite cables ending in a variety of different plugs and sockets.

Next was a crack sprite. It too was a semi-intelligent bot program that John had compiled and registered, and had given him quite a headache in the process. Where the data sprite was specialized in finding and manipulating data, the crack sprite was one that could break its own way through a firewall. This one looked similar to the data sprite, being a floating skull with no jawbone. Instead of a single manipulator claw it had an arm with a sharp drill and a second arm with a circular saw blade coming from the left and right jawbone sockets. It had no cybernetic camera eyes, but it had four odd cylinders implanted equally around the parietal bone of the skull with a metal banded wire running from each into the left eye socket. Its right eye socket was dark and empty, and it too had four similar mechadendrite cables dangling from where the spinal cord would be.

John had to think about what he wanted the sprites to do well beforehand. First was to task the data sprite with augmenting his stealth form to help prevent any detection. Before the sprite could begin he tasked the crack sprite with augmenting his exploit form to help him break through the firewall of Belenkiy's commlink.

The data sprite floated around behind John's icon. Two of the mechadendrite cables snaked under John's arms and across his chest to plug themselves into his shoulder blades. The other two penetrated John's icon at the shoulders and snaked their way down his arms. The skull itself floated just over his right shoulder.

The crack sprite extended two of its mechadendrite cables down John's arms, coiling around once to plug themselves into the back of John's hands.

Wasting no time, John slammed both hands into the golden orb that was Belenkiy's commlink, sending sparks of data to fly off into the void. It felt rock hard and resisted him just the same. It felt like the crack sprite's mechadendrites pushed out of his fingers to help tear apart the fragments of data from the firewall while the data sprite brushed those same bits of data aside and away from the commlink. Visually it looked like a circular disk grinder chewing its way into concrete.

With a second hard push John could feel the firewall giving way, breaking apart into rubble as he tore through like an alien parasite breaking out through someone's ribcage.

The sculpting of Belenkiy's commlink was like a business office, and it was as big of a mess as his room at the Horse Trot Ranch. Files in the form of various paper documents were strewn about in a chaotic mess. John looked around for any kind of response. By the time the sprites tasks ended, there had been no action, so he figured he was in the clear.

John went for the security settings of the commlink first, mostly because he wanted to know what it was doing with those pings. In addition to a mess of user name and password information what he found was that the commlink was waiting for a response from a particular tag. John noted the details of the tag in the commlink in his goggles, then proceeded to pick up and examine the various data files that were strewn about to see why Belenkiy might have been taken. He found some data on research projects Ares was but nothing else. Was it some new guns the kidnappers were after?

There was a single door to the office space of Belenkiy's commlink, which led to a large room filled with many doors and a kind of dial floating in the middle of the room. Turning the dial shifted the room greatly, allowing for access to more sets of doors. One in particular John noticed was labeled 'Ares R&D'. His first attempt to pass through resulted in him walking into a wall. Trying one of the user names noted 'Ares' and the password, and John was able to pass right on through.

John was connected straight into an Ares host, and it looked like he was deep inside one of their research and development nodes. The sculpting looked a lot like Belenkiy's commlink, except a lot neater. Chances were there was a staff of a dozen or more who also had access to this node likely were cleaner with the files. No other user icons were about, so John took his time in checking out other files. He found an incredible amount of interesting data, and had it copied to his commlink. When that was done he edited the files themselves to remove any traces they had been accessed recently, and logged off. The only data he left behind was in the access log itself, which John could not edit because of Belenkiy's authority. That did not matter, really, as key bits of data like that seemed to disappear within a day anyway. It was not something John could really explain. Any potentially compromising data just seemed to vanish.

Back inside of Belenkiy's commlink, John did the same to erase any trace of his activities, then logged off.

Groaning with a bit of stiffness, John sat up on Belenkiy's bed.

"Welcome back to the living." commented Hunter.

"What'd I miss?" John asked.

"I've made some calls," Valkyrie told them, ducking as she stepped back into the room, "and it's a team called the Black Cats that did the job."

"C'mon. It's Aztlan and you fuckin' know it." Billy declared, holding up an obsidian knife. "This was stuck in the wall, you know."

"After you dove in I found a black feather under the pillow." Hunter told John.

John thought for a moment, trying to remember why the feather sounded familiar. Then it hit him, recalling a news byte he had read about a Koshari hit where a bunch of black feathers were left behind. "Couldn't it be Koshari?" asked John.

Valkyrie shook her head. "It's all wrong for Koshari. This's a crow's feather, not a raven's feather. And the Koshari don't decorate their feathers. They just leave raven feathers behind." John did indeed see a strip of soft brown leather tied in a simple knot around the shaft of the feather that the fomori held. As for whether if it was a crow's or raven's feather, John had no idea how to tell the difference.

"How good's this contact?" asked Hunter.

"Very good when it comes to birds." Valkyrie said. "He's a talismonger for one. He's gotta know feathers and such. Also said it's a way of counting coup for the leader of the Black Cats."

John did not have a chance to ask what counting coup was.

"Then I say we track down the Black Cats." Hunter said, "But first, what'd you find in his 'link, Cypher?"

"Some weapons data." John told them, "From what I could get from Ares, he's some kind of gun maker."

"Gun maker?" Billy asked.

"Prob'ly weapons R&D." Hunter reasoned. "No sense kidnapping a guy that makes guns…"

"But a guy that develops them?" Valkyrie asked.

"Could be worth a lot." Hunter said.

John figured this was where the ransom came into play. "Great, so where do we start?" he asked.

For a while no one said anything. John kept looking from one to another, wondering who would speak first. He had no ideas, so he kept quiet.

"Something wrong, Billy?" Valkyrie asked.

Billy did look a little fidgety, though maybe this was because everyone was now looking at him.

"Well, I know of a place the Cats hang out at." Billy said. He sounded reluctant to say anything at all.

"Well?" pressed Hunter.

Billy sighed. "It's a bar called the Hardpan. But fuck that, let's go hit those Azzie squatters!" He held out the obsidian dagger like it was supposed to mean something. John had no idea what Billy was going on about. He also wondered where these squatters Billy was so insistent about were at.

"Ah." Hunter added, "Shit. We'll have to leave Cypher here. He can work the blackmailer angle."

"What!" John cried, jumping off the bed, "No fuckin' way I'm stayin'!"

Valkyrie shook her head. "What's the deal?"

"Amerindian watering hole." Hunter told them, "A kind of 'locals only' kind of place. We," she indicated to Valkyrie, Billy, and herself, "can expect trouble. Cypher, well, I don't think there wouldn't be person there that wouldn't chase him right back out."

"I'm part Amerindian." Billy countered, "And I already know the bartender there. Sandy'll talk to me. She'll tell you to fuck off, if she even speaks to you." He puffed up his chest, sounding rather proud of himself. John wondered just how big that Amerindian part was when his skin looked about as white as a Scandinavian's.

"Yeah, sure thing, skinhead." John returned.

Billy growled, and it looked like he was going to strike John. Hunter intervened by getting in between them.

"I'll sit outside for all I care, but you can go fuck yourself without me if you leave me here!" Cypher told them.

"Say what?" asked Hunter, looking like an upset mother.

"Fuck yourself. I'll walk." John told them.

"Then you won't get paid." Billy said matter-of-factly.

"Dunno 'bout you, but I still got rent money." John told Billy.

"Will you behave?" Hunter asked.

"If I can come along." John answered immediately. Then he realized she was not just looking at him.

"Well?" she asked Billy.

"Alright, but I ain't ridin' with him." relented Billy.

"Hey, can I get a copy of that security footage and hack?" John asked Hafiz.

Hafiz pulled out a commlink, and after a little bit he asked, "You understand discretion, yes?"

"Yeah." John muttered, "No sharing beyond us, no MeFeed or the like, shit like that."

"And?"

John sighed. He felt like Hafiz was treating him like he was as big of an idiot as Billy. "Ares doesn't know it exists. And same for any clients here."

Hafiz cracked a small smile, and John's common use commlink chimed with an incoming file transfer. He accepted, but routed the data to his higher end commlink. Once the transfer was complete he gave the contents a brief once over, and noticed that some of the data included the access logs from when the hacker broke in that morning. "The hacker's ID's in this?" John asked.

Hafiz only nodded.

"Thanks!" John told him with a smile.

Hafiz followed John and the others as they went back to their vehicles. They were also given a commcode they could use if they found any details.

Though it was just over thirteen kilometers south of the ranch, it took almost an hour to get there. Saturday night traffic was picking up early and every single traffic light seemed to be against them. Hanging on to Hunter on the back of her motorcycle, John opted to look through the security camera footage. He found it strange that three women were recorded entering and leaving the grounds, but nowhere was Belenkiy to be seen.

John then opted to make a call of his own, opening up an ARO to contact a guy who went by the handle of 'Merlin'.

"Merlin's Antiquities." said an icon of a blue robed wizard, with a gray beard and matching blue pointed hat.

"It's Cypher." John said.

"Hey kiddo! How's it going? Needing more ammo already?"

"Naw. Just doing a job for an old guy named Falcone." John said.

"I remember a guy with that name. Older gentleman in a wheelchair?" Merlin asked.

"Yup."

"He's a straight shooter." Merlin said, "Good rep, so you can take him at his word."

"Good to know."

"Yeah, but from what I hear there's a decker out there trying to dig up dirt on Falcone. HammerJack's his name, I think."

"Decker?" John asked.

"Old word for a hacker." Merlin told him. "Back in the day when you'd have to use a cyberdeck as big as you are, and find a someplace to jack in to actually hack."

"Sounds harsh." John commented.

"Yeah, but he's an old timer." Merlin said, "I don't know what happened to him, but he's really spacey."

"Know anything about an Ares guy named Belenkiy?" John asked.

"Ah, so there's the job." Merlin said. "Belenkiy. Belenkiy. Name sounds familiar, but I can't think of anything right now. I might know someone who does."

John keyed up five hundred nuyen and sent it to Merlin. "I'm supposed to send you cash to pay the other guy, right?" he asked.

"Something like that." Merlin said, accepting the transfer. "It'll take some time, though. I'll call you when I've got the details."

"You with us, Cypher?" he heard Hunter ask.

"Huh, what?" John asked, sitting up. "Oh, sorry. Was talking to a guy I know about Belenkiy. Gonna call me back later." He noticed the call had already ended.

A while later Hunter pulled into the parking lot of The Hardpan. From the smell of the air from algae tanks and water treatment plant nearby it was a wonder that there were as many jeeps and four-by-four trucks already there. But then, if they stank like Billy did as he and Valkyrie walked over to them, then he could understand.

"So, what's the game plan?" Valkyrie asked.

"Simple." Hunter said, "The three of us go in and talk with Sandy while Cypher sits out here and waits."

John frowned at the thought, but kept his mouth shut.

As the others walked into the bar, John climbed into the bed of Valkyrie's Gopher. To pass the time he opened up an ARO to a free matrix game site. A few minutes later his commlink beeped with an incoming call.

"Sorry for taking so long." Merlin apologized right away.

"Well, we're still looking for him." John said.

"Well, he's been on a fast track up the corporate food chain." Merlin said, "Too fast, in fact."

"Ex… Extr…" John said, trying to find the word.

"Extrication." Merlin said for him. "Maybe. My contact didn't know for sure. Did have something else that might be helpful."

"Oh?" John asked.

A file transfer request popped up, and John accepted the file from Merlin. When he opened it there was nothing but raw data.

"Frequency and ID of a tag that's implanted in him." Merlin said.

"He's got a tag implanted in him?" John asked. He found the idea of having something like a spy bug implanted inside his body repugnant.

"Apparently a lot of Ares execs have unique tags implanted in them." Merlin said, "Supposed to make security less of a hassle for them."

"So I can track him down with this?" John asked excitedly.

"Yes you can, but not if he's taken into a static zone." Merlin told him. "There's a lot of Denver that's still not covered by the matrix."

"Got it." John said, already trying to figure out how to interpret the frequency code into something he would understand. "Thanks for the help." he said, ending the call.

"Well, what do you know?" John asked himself. He got as comfortable as he could in the back of Valkyrie's truck at let his mind sink into the depths of virtual reality.

First thing John did was access the details on Belenkiy's tag to start tracking it down. It was a hard start for the first minute in trying to perform this kind of a search, but after a few more minutes had managed to get it narrowed down to a roughly fifty meter radius. Checking an overview map turned up a few buildings in the area. A little bit more research revealed the most likely one a place called DIY Storage.

Bringing his mind back to the real world, John saw he was still alone in the parking lot. With some time to kill he decided to look up 'counting coup'.

It was not too long after when the others came out of the bar. The women did not look too pleased, and Billy looked really pissed off.

"What happened?" asked John.

"Billy decided to light up a joint." Valkyrie said. She helped John out of the back of her truck.

"So?" John asked as his feet hit the asphalt.

"All Sioux bars are non-smoking." Hunter said just before she slipped her helmet on. "Anyway, we got a meeting with the Black Cats in two hours."

It was over an hour to get to a golf course, and along the way Hunter privately told John about Billy's indiscretion in lighting up a cigarette of marijuana while in the bar.

After reaching the golf course, and not parking too close to avoid the surveillance drones, it was another half hour of walking to avoid those drones. The meet itself was apparently in the golf course's parking lot. As long as the wind blew away from Billy there was a pleasing smell of cut grass.

"So who're we meeting again?" John asked after they had been waiting for about ten minutes.

"Kyra, leader of the Black Cats." Hunter said.

The two hours were not up yet when a woman rode into the parking lot on a motorcycle.

"I see two spirits with her." Valkyrie said softly.

Propping her cycle on the kickstand, she looked about before stepped closer. She was about as tall as Hunter, with a similar build but tighter bust, and distinctly Native American features. Her black hair was pulled tight into a bun, and her eyes were quite obviously cybernetic.

Checking the time, John saw it was just after 21.00.

John received a text from Hunter. It read, "Any signals?"

"Táku cha yachin he? Nituwe he?" Kyra asked. John had no idea what she just said.

Already John was feeling the WiFi around. He fully expected the other Black Cats to be around as backup.

"Let me handle this." Billy said, stepping forward.

John could not help but groan when he heard that. He also managed to find a signal that was not part of their network that felt like it was coming from Kyra. "I found one." John texted back to Hunter, but kept feeling around.

"I know you understand English." Hunter said, nodding once, "And we're here to talk about Belenkiy. That's all."

"What do you know of this… Belenkiy?" Kyra asked in slightly accented English.

John grinned when he saw Billy's face, a combination of shock, dumbfounded, and 'fuck you' all rolled into one as he glared at Hunter. He had also isolated and identified Kyra's commlink. Its access ID did not match the one that had broken into the Ranch's network. The singular signal also felt weaker, thinner, than John expected.

"Cypher?" Hunter asked, not giving Billy a second look.

"Uh, yeah. Well, the Black Cats got caught on vid breaking in." John said, "And recorded again on the way out. Belenkiy is the only person missing, you left your signature feather in his room, and if the Cats have a hacker she's an idiot."

Kyra glared at John. "You don't know us." she snarled.

"Hacker breaks in after you do, gets caught and didn't wipe the security feed?" John asked back, "Thought I was nice in saying you just didn't fuck it up. On top of that the guy's tagged. I've already tracked him down to some place called DIY Storage."

The look on Kyra's face told John he had gotten a lot right. He began working on her commlink, trying to force a virtual hand through its firewall.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Kyra told them.

"We should've just hit their place." groaned Billy.

John managed to force his hand through the firewall of Kyra's commlink.

"You just go ahead and do that." Hunter said, "But you'll be doing it alone."

A quick look at the list of subscriptions in Kyra's commlink showed nothing else was connected to it nearby. If she had anything beyond her obvious cyber eyes, John did not know. It also meant that he could not pull the same disappearing trick on her that he had done on Billy last week. The thin signal he was feeling was a single channel of audio coming from the microphone in Kyra's commlink. He sent a text to Hunter telling her what he found.

"So what do you want?" Kyra asked, looking as tense as ever.

"Well, you kidnapped an Ares exec," Hunter said, "and there's parties concerned about what you're going to do with him."

"Nothing." Kyra told them.

"You're not holding him for ransom?" Valkyrie asked.

"What ransom?" Kyra asked back.

"You damn well know what ransom, bitch." snapped Billy.

"Cypher, would you?" pleaded Hunter.

At the speed of thought John was through the pitiful firewall of Billy's commlink, the same exploit he used last week working again as he barged his way through. Unsurprisingly everything was about the same as he had last seen it, so he uploaded a copy of his Negator program, isolated Kyra and had it erase her from Billy's sight.

"Son of a…" cursed Billy as he lunged at John.

"Fuck!" John yelled, ducking away from a wildly thrown punch. As quickly as he could he had the Negator program edit out everyone else from view. John figured Billy was very stupid when it came to electronics when there were ways John knew to counter this trick.

"Calm down!" yelled Hunter.

"Hell no!" Billy yelled back, lunging at her.

Hunter lashed out with a vicious snap kick, planting her heel full force into Billy's stomach. He quickly doubled over and collapsed.

"Don't mind him." Hunter said with an unusual calmness. "If we fight, you'll know it."

Kyra did not look appeased.

"You didn't place any ransom?" John asked.

"We never made any demands on him." Kyra told them. She looked dead serious.

"So, what exactly were you paid to do with Belenkiy?" Hunter asked.

"Take him. Do nothing to him. See what he says. Return him the next day. Report back to Johnson." Kyra told them rather curtly.

"She's telling the truth." Valkyrie said. "Whole time."

"Bullshit." gasped Billy, still trying to catch his breath.

"Yes, she is." Hunter added. "Now please shut up while I call in."

Kyra looked rather edgy as she glanced about while Hunter made her call. It certainly was handy being able to think your conversation straight through a commlink without actually having to say anything.

"Cypher, can you connect Kyra to the call?" Hunter asked.

"No prob." John said, grabbing a data line from Kyra's commlink and slinging it into Hunter's commcall. It took a moment for Hunter's commlink to accept the connection.

Kyra looked rather shocked when she found her commlink suddenly in a conference call.

Everyone waited in silence as Kyra told Jaron Falcone the exact same thing she had told them.

"Okay, we're done here." Hunter told them. John could feel the data line between their commlinks fade.

John ran two fingers over his right ear.

"You sure about that?" Valkyrie asked.

"We've still got the hacker angle to deal with." Hunter told them.

Kyra only nodded before she returned to her motorcycle.

Figuring that Billy was going to behave himself, John closed and deleted the Negator program in Billy's commlink. He followed the others as they left, leaving a small image file in Kyra's commlink where he hoped she would find it before cutting the connection.

They met up at their vehicles, but neither Hunter or Valkyrie looked like they were ready to head out.

"So how the fuck do we track down this hacker?" asked Billy.

"Didn't he leave any trace behind when he hacked the Ranch?" Valkyrie asked.

"Just an ID." John said.

"Well, shit, can't you just use that?" Billy asked.

John sighed. He had forgotten about that.

"If the guy's smart he's already changed his ID." Hunter said. "And if he's got his 'link off, the ID's as good as useless anyway." John had thought of this just as Hunter told everyone.

"So we've got absolutely nothing to go on?" Billy asked.

"No, we first check into Falcone." Hunter said. "Whoever's got a grudge against him could be it."

John sat down against the back tire of Valkyrie's truck while the others talked. Billy seemed rather adamant about just going back to the Ranch to get paid. The repeated counter argument was that they needed Belenkiy to do that, and unless Billy wanted to deal with all four of the Black Cats by himself, that was not going to happen. Billy seemed pressed still, even despite the fact that Valkyrie kept reminding him that Kyra had two spirits with her.

Fortunately John did not have to wait much longer.

"Greetings old boy," came a hollow sounding voice from Billy's commlink, something that sounded as if it were also being carried across a chasm before it reached a microphone, "we need to talk about how badly you've just been screwed by a man named Falcone."

"What the?" Billy went, utterly confused as he looked at his commlink.

"What's he talking about?" Hunter asked.

"Good," the voice continued, "now that I've got your attention, meet me in one hour. Room three-one-four-one of the Hub's Avatar Assassin Guild Hall. VR only. The name's Void, you'll recognize me." And that was it.

Right away John started looking up the Avatar Assassin Guild Hall.

"Well, you'll have to do this one without me." Valkyrie said.

"Don't even have a sim?" Billy asked in a childish tone.

"Ever get a clue?" Valkyrie bit back.

"So then it'll be the three of us." John said.

"Where'd he say to go?" Hunter asked.

"Avatar Assassin Guild Hall." John said. "Looks like the node's located in the Hub."

"Uh, yeah. Good luck with that." Billy said.

"What?" asked Hunter with that disapproving mother tone of voice.

"I said good luck with that." repeated Billy.

"What the fuck you talking about?" asked Hunter. "You've bragged about being bad ass in VR, so what gives?"

John wondered where this bragging came from, or what would have made Billy think he could be bad ass at anything matrix related with crap software and shit for hardware.

"Maybe they kicked him out?" John asked, "You know, like, forever?"

"Look, I can't go there, alright?" Billy cried.

"Then we'll wait here while you do your thing. You can use my truck." Valkyrie said.

John climbed into the passenger seat and made himself comfortable before letting his mind slip into the depths of matrix's virtual reality. From there he searched out the address for the meet with Void.

The Avatar Assassin Guild Hall looked like some kind of eleventh century cathedral in its architecture inside and out, built out of white granite and illuminated by the sun from the outside through large stained glass windows. Huge double doors represented the portal where users entered. Despite the ancient look of the place, the icons of the users within were largely far from the period.

Particularly John's icon, that it looked like a full suite of military grade body armor, complete with full helmet, and all black in color. Worn over the armor was a contrasting beige robe, with a pair of pistols at his sides, and a sheathed long sword at his back. He figured he could make himself look like a robed knight instead, make a little effort to fit into the period of the node's sculpting. Considering the number of other users' icons that did not, he opted not to bother. Especially when one user looked like he or she was a robot that had walked right out of a Gundam program.

Hunter was right beside him, and her icon was also just as outlandish. She appeared to be wearing full power armor from some kind of super science fiction, orange and angular, with a red breast plate and domed helmet. Any face the icon might have had was obscured by a green V-shaped visor. Oversized pauldrons covered the shoulders, and the right arm was a literal cannon from the elbow down. John figured it was a representation of an attack program, just as his pistols were an attack form. Whether or not she had such a program loaded would be impossible to tell.

John mentally made sure his stealth form was letting his icon be seen as he entered the node. It was a good thing, as an icon appeared in his field of view giving him a rundown of rules for the node, which included no stealth based software.

"So why do you think he can't come here?" Hunter asked.

"His commlink looked like it was decorated by a three year old." John told her. "Maybe they got taste in icons?"

"Could be." Hunter mused.

"I'm sorry, who are you asking about?" asked another user. His icon looked like it was from the period, wearing a white robe with the hood drawn, dark brown leather gloves, and a pair of daggers at his waist.

"Sorry, we don't know what his name here is." Hunter said.

John pulled a strip of data out from his left hand, a file that simply contained the access IDs of Billy's commlinks. "Here's IDs I know he has."

The other user took the data file. "Ah, yes, him." he said with a chuckle. "Banned forever. Broke a dozen rules here, annoyed everyone, and tried getting around the ban. Idiot used the exact same icon the second time."

"That's all we need, thanks." Hunter said, walking away.

John sent a request for the node's rules as he followed Hunter, and quickly looked over the file when it popped up. He found more than a dozen that he figured Billy would not have given a shit about. A lot of the rules just seemed like common sense stuff that any decent person would follow. But then Billy was not exactly a model example of a decent person.

"The voice said to log into room thirty-one forty-one." Hunter said. "There's a portal for private rooms over there."

John and Hunter made their way through the foyer to one of several recessed doors. In the center was an icon that looked like a combination lock of four dials made from carved stone. John spun the dials to match the number 3141. Upon touching the submit icon the portal opened up for them. The firewall felt like soft cobwebs brushing over him as he passed through it on a public access account.

According to the message, Void's icon certainly was not hard to find. Amongst the user icons was a floating black void that looked like it was sucking in bits of other nearby icons. John moved over to the floating void.

"You called about a man named Falcone?" Hunter asked.

It almost looked like the void actually turned around. "Maybe." he said, his voice the same sounding hollow style as from the comm call. "Not quite who I expected."

"Well, we're it." Hunter said.

"Well," Void said, "you're in a whole lot of trouble working for Falcone."

"I'm always in trouble." John countered, his voice sounding like a chorus of a dozen people talking in unison but not in tune, "Tell me something new." He started a trace on Void's icon.

Void chuckled. "Nothing's free." he said, "I can help, but it'll cost you twenty-five hundred."

"You're asking, but all we got is piss and wind." Hunter said. "For all we know you could've seen us pull up at Falcone's place and scanned a commcode."

"You're playing a dangerous game." Void returned. "Falcone's prepared to screw you over if you fail."

"We always risk a Johnson planning to screw us over." Hunter said, "Comes with the job. You should know that as well as any of us."

John felt a little nervous when Hunter said that. He had honestly not counted on something like a Johnson doing anything like that. Of course, this was only his second real job and he still had a lot to learn.

His heart skipped again when the trace on Void resolved itself, pinning his physical location at Union Station in the Hub. What excited John was that the access ID that came with this information was the same that had been recorded by the Ranch's logs at the time of the break in.

"Maybe, Void," John said, "but at least I'm not sloppy enough to get caught in a node."

"What're you talking about?" Void asked.

John could feel a tendril of data gently snaking itself around him, blurry like wet ice and almost as subtle as a spider's web. Right away he threw a spoof at it to redirect at it, and could feel the trace become substantially scrambled.

"At least I'd change my access ID after a fucked up job." John answered.

"What are you getting on about, Cypher?" Hunter asked.

"Void's at Union Station." John said, "His access ID's the same as what hacked the Ranch this morning."

"Then the deal's off." Hunter said, turning to leave the chat room.

The web of data began to tighten around John's icon again.

"Isn't tracing a user against the rules here?" Hunter asked.

"I think I saw that in the rules." John said. He had forgotten about that when he started tracing Void.

Hunter turned back, her left hand holding her right arm just below the shoulder. The barrel of her hand cannon split evenly into four pieces with a metallic snap-click. "I let you slide once on it, cut it out or there's gonna be a fight." Hunter growled.

John pulled one of his pistols, but put his other hand on the hilt of his sword.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Void said.

"Blast him." Hunter said.

John expected a beam or some kind of futuristic particle blast to come from her hand cannon. Instead it was a missile that exploded with so much disruptive code that it briefly washed out John's vision.

Instead of shooting Void, John opted for something a little more dramatic. With his sword in both hands he leaped at Void's icon, plunging it down like a knight of old piercing the skull of a fallen dragon.

"Fuck civility, just log off!" were the last words John heard just before her icon disappeared.

John did more than just log off from the chat, but cut himself off from the matrix entirely. No signal, no traffic, no nothing.

"You okay?" Hunter asked him.

"Yeah." John answered, "Just making sure Void'll have a hard time tracking me."

"Get yourself a spoof chip." she said. "Can make it a lot easier."

Opening himself back to the matrix was a welcome relief. Right away he slaved his commlinks back to his mind.

"So what's up?" Billy asked.

"Void's 'bout as smart as you." John answered.

"Say what?" Billy asked, his voice pitching up a little.

"Void tried to scam us for knowledge." Hunter said, "Claimed Falcone's gonna screw us over when we get back."

"No way! We did the job!" Billy cried.

"Chill, will ya?" John asked. He ignored the others while Hunter tried to explain things. Instead he brought up Tabby's commcode to give her a call.

"Hey kiddo." came Tabby's voice. She was sounding less than cheerful, but it was also after midnight now. "How's the job?"

"Partly done." John said, "But I need to know if you know a couple people."

"What kind of people?" Tabby asked, sounding a little clearer of mind.

"First's a guy by the name of Void." John said. "Seems to be fucking around with Falcone."

"Uses an icon that looks like a black hole?" Tabby asked.

"That's the guy." John told her.

"A real space case." Tabby said, "Always runs VR hot, and you can't seem to pin him down on his sources."

"Not much help." John said, "Already met the guy. A real whack job."

"Who's the other guy?"

"Goes by the name HammerJack." John said, "Heard he was diggin' dirt on Falcone."

"Yeah, the two got history." Tabby told him, sounding a bit sleepy now, "Been hangin' 'round Union Station lately. Nice public place to search the 'trix."

"Union Station?" John asked excitedly. His mind started racing, like when putting a puzzle together and you suddenly find five pieces that all fit together. "I traced Void to Union Station not ten minutes ago!"

"Wait, you thinking…?" Tabby started to ask.

"Ya think Void and HammerJack are the same guy?" John asked. "This Void guy seemed to have a beef on Falcone. Tried telling us he was gonna fuck us over, and all."

"Could be." Tabby said, "No such thing as coincidences in this game."

"Got it! Thanks!" John said, ending the call.

Focusing his mind back to the real world, John saw that the others were still arguing about Void.

"I'll pay the guy myself!" Billy declared, "Just call 'im up and I'll send the cred!"

John just shook his head, smiling big all the while.

"What you grinnin' at?" Billy asked angrily.

"Made a call and put two and two together." John answered, "Ya know the answer to that?"

"Four." Billy grunted.

"Nope." John said, still smiling.

Billy growled.

"Could you just tell us?" asked Valkyrie. "I don't really wanna knock him out."

"I called a guy earlier about Belenkiy. He told me about a decker named HammerJack that was digging around about Falcone." John told them.

"So?" Billy asked.

"My other call said HammerJack's been doin' data dredging on Falcone from Union Station." John said, "That Void guy was also at Union Station, and he's the one that hacked the Ranch this morning."

"I don't get it." Billy said.

"I told you this Void guy seemed to be really pissy about us working for Falcone." Hunter said. "And how'd you know that, Cypher?"

Valkyrie only shook her head

"I traced him while we were talkin' at the Guild." John said. "His ID matched the Ranch's hacking."

"Shit." Hunter said with a sigh. "So you think this HammerJack and Void are one in the same?"

"Just a coincidence." muttered Billy.

"Surprised you know the word." remarked John.

Billy just sneered back.

"Yeah, gotta agree with Cypher." Valkyrie said, "Seems too much to be just a coincidence."

"So what're we gonna do?" asked Billy.

"We go back and report to Falcone." Hunter said.

The ten odd kilometers back to the Horse Trot Ranch were in silence. Along the way John thought about the whole deal with Belenkiy. Why go through the trouble to kidnap him only to do nothing to him and send him back the next day?

Then he remembered Merlin's comment about Belenkiy's fast climb up the career path. In a school or some kind of competition there would have been a lot of questions if someone performed too well or too fast. What if Ares was wondering about Belenkiy's fast promotions?

"Hold up a bit, please." John asked Hunter after they had gotten to the Ranch.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Been thinking about this whole thing." John confessed. "What if Ares hired the Cats?"

"Thinking a little too much, huh?" Hunter asked.

"Could do something else while I'm hangin' on." John told her.

"True." Hunter said wryly. "So thinking Ares is testing him?"

"Yeah, maybe I'm over thinking things." John said.

"Lemme ask Val." she said.

Billy did not even seem to notice he was walking alone as the women talked. In fact he was the first to reach the stable and turned to look back at them, giving a 'what the fuck' kind of look.

John did not get a chance to hear their opinions when Hafiz opened the door for them. Jaron Falcone was waiting for them inside.

"So, I hope you have more news?" Falcone asked.

"Ever hear of a hacker named Void?" Hunter asked.

"Void?" Falcone asked back.

"Maybe HammerJack?" John asked. "It's the same guy."

"HammerJack I know." Falcone said with a scowl.

"Well, he's the one who hacked you." John told him. "He tried ex… ex…"

"Extorting?" Hunter said.

"That's it." John said, "He tried extorting us."

Falcone nodded. "I'll take care of this." he told them. He then waved his hand like he was using an AR interface, and John saw a transfer of seven thousand nuyen come to his commlink. "Job well done."

Taking his time on the way back out, John sought out Belenkiy's commlink. Still having the access information he was able to log in easily. He scripted up a rather easy note file about Ares testing him, left it in an easy to find place, and set the commlink to go back into whatever secured standby mode it was when he had hacked into it.

They all then parted ways once they were out on the streets. Well, almost as John accepted a ride from Hunter back to near his home in the UCAS sector. Along the way he did some research into the motorcycle she had, though came up with a few different names and similar models.

When he finally got home, John peeled off his goggles and some of his clothes before collapsing on his bed.

It was late afternoon before John woke up again. Without opening his eyes, or even climbing out of bed, he reached out mentally to his commlink to give Merlin a call.

"Merlin's Antiquities." a man answered.

"It's Cypher." John said.

"Hey," the man said, "how's the job?"

"No sweat." John told him. "And I got is a sweet prize for you." He copied what looked like a picture of a very interesting looking handgun and sent it over to Merlin.

"Nice." Merlin said, "But that's not exactly new."

John pulled up some of the details and forwarded them to Merlin.

Merlin whistled. "Now this's different. Just how much you got?" Merlin asked.

"Specs on a few dozen weapons." John answered, "Including a really odd shotgun." He sent an image file of it over.

"Nice." Merlin commented when he looked the picture over. "I assume you've got the details on this one, too?"

"Yeah." John told him, sending over a few details on just how much data he had acquired.

"Shit, you got a lot." remarked Merlin. "I know a lot of people that'd be interested. I'll pay you twenty thousand for the lot."

John felt as if he had been struck by lightning. "Deal!"

The transfer was simultaneous, though John kept a copy of the data for himself.

"Holy shit." John heard Merlin mutter, figuring the fence was skimming through the data now. "Anything you'll be needing while you got me on the line?"

"Could use a set of wheels." John said, "Thinking about a motorcycle."

"Like a Suzuki?" Merlin asked.

"Here, like this." John said, forwarding over a picture of a motorcycle similar to Hunter's.

"Looks like a Contrail." Merlin said, "A twenty-sixty-nine model, I think. Don't have any right now, but I've got something nearly like it in the back."

"How nearly?" John asked.

"It's called a Katana-11," Merlin told him, "made by Yamaha. The model's a twenty-seventy, faster than the Contrail, but it took a hit to handling. It's also got a lot of space to trick it out, just like the Contrail. But it'll need some work, though."

"Okay. I'll take it."


	3. Run 03 : The Grab

Run 03 : The Grab (based on the mission written by Cliff Hensley)

The day was turning out to be another dull day in a string of dull days. It was only on the bright side that John had managed to get himself a motorcycle similar to what Hunter had, though it was lacking a good engine, good tires, a pilot program, and more. He had barely managed to drive it home.

At least the price was right. He had gotten it dirt cheap. And somehow Merlin had managed to add a drivers license to his fake IDs.

John was scrolling through a download of The Denver Daily and listening to a trideo of a baseball game between the Denver Ghosts and Boston Red Sox, when his commlink chimed an incoming call. He muted the game and then answered the call on the third ring.

An ARO popped open with an image of an attractive Asian woman. As far as John knew he had never met her before, there was no sense of familiarity in her looks or her voice when she spoke.

"I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time." she said.

"Yeah, it's bad." John told her, "It'll be a good time with work."

She smiled. "My name is Ms. Johnson, and I do have some business I'd like to discuss. Let's meet for dinner, my treat." She paused a moment before adding, "Do you like rattlesnake?"

"Not sure." John answered, "But I'm willin' to try."

"Great. Meet me at the Rattlesnake Grill in PCC territory as soon as you can." she told him, and hung up.

John switched out the ID chip for a different ID before leaving.

Once on the surface John walked towards the border crossing on East 6th Ave as it crossed I-225. He got pulled aside by a border guard, but after a few waves of a MAD wand he was waved on through. He managed to hold a smile that the check missed his ceramic made Morrissey Élan pistols.

There was a bus station for the Front Range Transit International Incorporated, or FRTII for short. There was no problem as he got a ticket and boarded a bus bound for the west side of the CAS sector. For a reason John could not figure or understand, no bus route crossed any border. A little over half an hour later John was walking across the border along West Colfax Ave, over the South Platte River, and through the border checkpoint into the PCC sector.

Years ago West Colfax Avenue marked the border between the PCC and Ute sectors all the way to the western border of the Front Range Free Zone. This changed in February of 2067 when the Ute nation itself was absorbed by the Pueblo Corporate Council, and their sector was likewise absorbed. As much of their border was only chain link fencing, what fencing there was had long since been torn down.

"We gotta stop meeting like this." John heard someone say as he walked to the next bus station.

"Why're you here?" John asked as he continued walking.

"'Cause the West Hampden border is murder this time of day." Hunter told him as she slowly drove alongside. "So, where you off to?"

"Thought I'd try some rattlesnake." he said.

"Funny, I had the same thought." Hunter said. "Asian woman?" she asked.

John stopped walking. Looked like she had called the both of them.

"Hop on, I'll give you a lift." she said.

It certainly was nicer riding on the back of her motorcycle than on a bus.

The Rattlesnake Grill did not look like it was anything special on the outside, with a decorative sign out front advertising the name.

Inside was quite different, with a warm and welcoming atmosphere of a family style restaurant, with open booths and a good spread of tables that would not make you feel like you were crammed in a can of sardines.

As soon as John stepped through the threshold into the restaurant a welcome ARO popped up in his view, and gave him the option to view the menu. He canceled it right away to get rid of it.

Ms. Johnson was already in a booth, along with Valkyrie and Billy. The table itself already had appetizers and drinks waiting.

"Always gonna be constantly late?" Billy asked.

"Only as long as you're gonna be constantly stupid." retorted John.

"This isn't exactly a 'bring-your-son-to-work' job." Ms. Johnson commented when she saw them.

"I'm Cypher." John said sharply as he slid into the booth behind Hunter. "I ain't her kid."

Hunter merely nodded.

"You're certain he's Cypher, and not some kid saying he is?" Ms. Johnson asked skeptically. "This ain't a game, kid."

"I don't know anyone else calling himself 'Cypher'." Hunter said. "Worked two jobs with him, and so far he's good."

"I see." Ms. Johnson said softly. "Anyway, thank you all for coming. I know it's short notice, but I appreciate your punctuality. Shall we order? I'm starving."

John brought up a copy of the restaurant's menu. It was rather family oriented, but instead of chicken or beef it was mostly snake meat. He selected a snake strip meal, which came with some veggies, and a chocolate shake.

"How about we get this business out of the way so we can enjoy our meals?" Ms. Johnson asked. "I need a team of professionals for a fairly routine extraction. The work pays thirty-six thousand for the whole team. You can divide that up however you prefer. I can give you ten percent up front as a retainer, and to help cover expenses. Are you in or out?"

"Yeah, sure." Hunter said right away.

"I'm in." Valkyrie added.

"Sure." John said after giving it a little thought.

"Nine thousand each for a snatch and grab?" Billy asked. "Feels a little light."

"Not as light as your brain." remarked John. He noticed Billy glaring at him, and responded by sticking out his tongue at the razorboy.

"Would you two settle down?" Valkyrie asked.

"He started it!" accused Billy.

"Did not!" John called back.

"Boys! Boys!" Hunter pleaded.

John felt he was in the right. All Billy had to do was just accept the job at the rate that Ms. Johnson had offered. Even split four ways, nine thousand nuyen would be more than enough for some of the accessories John wanted for his motorcycle.

"Hey, just tryin'." Billy said more calmly. "Wallet's feelin' a little light."

"Just don't spend it on beer, drugs, and hookers." John muttered, "That'll help a lot."

Billy apparently heard what John said, moving as if to lunge over the table at him. Valkyrie was fast on the ball, and despite the razorboy's strength with her formidable size was able to keep Billy in his seat.

Hunter had also heard it, John figured. He saw a scowl on her face that made him think of an upset and disapproving mother. He figured it would be best to keep quiet.

"Alright, I'm in." Billy finally relented, seeing as he was not going to get any support from the others.

Ms. Johnson reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a picture and discretely slid it onto the table. "This is the most recent photograph I have of the target." she said, "Her name is Catherine Westmore. Within three days time, I need you to get the girl and deliver her, unharmed, to a second team who will be awaiting your arrival at a safehouse in the Aurora Warrens."

John finally managed to get a look at the pic as it was slid around the table. Behind his goggles his eyes went wide as he saw a girl of mixed Asian-Caucasian heritage, with long and straight dark hair, wearing a school uniform, and smiling. Her smile itself was compromised by braces and obvious cybernetic eyes. On top of that John figured that she could not be any older than he was!

"This is very important:" Ms. Johnson continued, "not one hair on her head is to be touched. If she is hurt in any way, and I mean in any way at all, you get nothing."

Just after that their food was delivered. He ate his snake strips in silence while the others talked. Mostly it was about how they could get Catherine without harming her. After a while John opened up an ARO to begin a data on Catherine. After a few minutes he got a hit on an elementary school's node. He bookmarked it for a possible hack job later.

After they finished dinner they all headed out the front door.

"Well, this is where we part ways." Ms. Johnson told them once they were out in the parking lot, "Good luck. I'll catch you later."

"Catch?" man's voice chimed in. John turned to look at who it was.

Several men in leather were walking up. John knew their colors right away as belonging to the Godz. They did not look happy.

"The only thing you're catching anytime soon, Lady Jade, is a one way ticket straight to Hell!"

Seeing the go-gangers pulling for weapons, John ran to hide behind a car for cover. After hearing a bit of gunfire he twitched his left hand for the holdout, and peeked above the back end of a sedan.

Billy looked like he was completely insane, with his spurs extended as he kept lunging at the gangers and swinging wildly.

When one of the Godz was about to shoot at them, John squeezed off two shots first.

John heard a few gunshots, and ducked down. Looking across the parking lot he saw Hunter crouching behind a car of her own with a large pistol in hand.

"Cowards!" John heard Billy yell. Looking back, John could see three Godz lying on the ground, including the one he shot at. The rest of them had fled.

"You can chase 'em down if you want." remarked Hunter as she stood and holstered her handgun.

"Thanks for the help." Ms. Johnson said, "You'll get a little bonus for that when all this is done, I promise." She looked around before adding, "For now, though, we need to move. PuebSec's bound to show up soon."

John ignored them and started heading over to Hunter's motorcycle.

"Hey, I just wanted them to tell me what the fuck that was all about!" cried Billy.

"Then you can ask PuebSec when they get here!" Hunter returned as she joined John. "I sure as hell ain't gonna wait here to find out."

"What about our Johnson?" Billy asked.

John looked around and now could not see Ms. Johnson. "All mine knows is when I've gotta take a piss." he answered as he climbed onto Hunter's motorcycle right behind her.

"I meant Lady Jade!" amended Billy.

"I don't think she's got a Johnson!" John yelled so he could be heard over the engine of Hunter's motorcycle.

"Meet up at Rock Solid!" Hunter yelled. The engine of her motorcycle roared, and John tightened his grip around her as they sped out from the parking lot.

A little over an hour later, along with many favorable traffic lights and a less than attentive border check guard, Hunter and John arrived at Rock Solid, a small bar on East Colfax Avenue. Along the way John expanded on his data searches on Catherine, and somewhere in the mess of data he got her home address as well.

A few minutes later Valkyrie pulled up in her truck.

"So, how're we gonna get the girl?" Billy asked as he and Valkyrie walked over to Hunter and John.

"Sorry, was a little bit busy driving." Hunter returned, "Not like I can let my motorcycle do the driving while I do a data search on someone."

"Like your car can drive itself." John added, "Oh, sorry, you ain't got a car."

"Hey, I ain't seen you with a set of wheels, kid." Billy growled.

"I've been working on my ride. What's your excuse?"

"Are we done?" Valkyrie asked.

John said nothing more. Billy looked like he was going to say something more, but then looked like he had an uncharacteristic moment of clarity and closed his mouth. John wondered if it would be the smartest thing Billy would say all night.

"First up we're gonna need to get some info on the target." Hunter said. She looked like she was a bit distracted, not looking at any of them while she spoke.

Without a word, John forwarded the address of Catherine's school and home to everyone's commlink. When everyone started looking at him, John shrugged, saying, "What? I did some data searches during dinner and on the way here."

Hunter looked like she was deep in thought. "Upper-middle class neighborhood. Looks like homes and condos out there."

"School's a public one." John added.

"So how're we gonna get her?" Billy asked impatiently. "We could raid the condo."

"And a stray shot or spell could hit her." Hunter countered. "I won't risk a bullet going through a wall and pegging her by mistake."

"So you'll just use gel and shock rounds." Billy told them, "And Valkyrie can use lightning balls."

"And I could kill her anyway." Valkyrie told them, "Ever heard of electrocution?"

Apparently the thought had never crossed Billy's mind. That did not surprise John in the least.

"And I suppose jacking the car on her way to school's out too?" Billy asked.

"I'd sooner storm the house." Hunter answered.

Almost right away half a dozen reasons not to pull off a carjacking came to John's mind.

"C'mon. Cypher could hack the car." Billy countered. Oddly all the reasons John had involved him hacking a car.

"She's got a bodyguard." Hunter told them, "Ex-UCAS military, and I doubt he's stupid. And if he's got the car rigged right all it'll take is a flip of a switch and the WiFi's cut." Hunter returned. "Then Cypher'll be dumpshocked and we'll end up with a high speed chase at two hundred kph down highway eighty-seven!"

John had to admit that what Hunter had just said, the flip of a switch to cut the WiFi, was not one of the things he had thought of. Now if only he could figure out where this bodyguard came from all of a sudden.

"What if we're the ones to pick her up from school?" John asked. "Valkyrie and Billy can do something to keep the bodyguard from being on time, while we," he indicated to himself and Hunter, "drive off with Catherine?"

"Best idea yet." Valkyrie said.

Hunter nodded. "So how do we track Catherine down?" she asked.

John grinned. "Hey, I'm a kid, right?" he asked back.

"Got it." Hunter said.

Valkyrie only nodded.

John saw Billy looked a bit confused.

"Ya know," John said, "the number two hundred describes us guys pretty well." He grinned. "It's my I.Q. and your weight."

It took a second for Billy's confused look to turn to a scowl. Valkyrie barely had him by both shoulders to hold him back.

"We'll discuss what to do about the bodyguard." Valkyrie said, "Why don't you rest in my truck while you deal with getting in the school."

"And take your time at it." added Hunter.

Nodding, John headed over to Valkyrie's truck and climbed into the passenger seat. Submersing himself fully into VR, John began the slow job of breaking into the school's node. After a few hours of gentle probing and wiggling he was through. Once he was sure he had not triggered an alert he sent a message to Hunter.

The sculpting inside the school's node was rather unimaginative, looking like a school, and probably what the school itself really looked like. John worked his way carefully through the school's node as he created a back door account before starting on his admissions file. Largely he copied another one that had recently been approved, making many necessary changes so it would not look like it was merely a copy job. He even added a medical note to his file so he could wear a pair of black wraparound sunglasses as 'protective eyewear' all the time while in class. Getting back in touch with Hunter, he got extra information to use her as his mother and emergency contact. They decided to use a remarried excuse to explain the different last names from their SINs. He hoped that the school would not dig even farther and find that there was no blood relation their SINs data. The last thing he did was to create himself a backdoor to get back in again if he needed to.

Then came setting up his class schedule. This took a little more finagling so he could be in as many classes with Catherine as possible. Considering there were other students who had shared classes throughout the day, this turned out not too difficult to do. The only class John could not get his way into was a Home Economics class as it was segregated for girls only. As a fill-in he got himself into a beginning Business Economics class.

Last up was a download of an e-book involving the school, rules and conduct, and such. John figured he would read it later.

Once back to the real world he stretched out to try and loosen up his arms and legs. Valkyrie had a nice truck, such as it was, but it certainly was no luxury La-Z-Boy recliner.

There was a rap at the window, and in looking up he saw Hunter there. John figured their planning was done.

"Since we're gonna do the mother-son thing, it'd be best you stayed with me tonight." Hunter said as soon as John climbed out of the truck. "Got a sedan too. It'd look better than you showing up on foot."

"Yeah, sure." John said, stretching his arms up high to loosen up and feeling too tired to argue.

"I still think I should try to get her." John heard Billy say.

"Not a chance." Hunter called back.

"Because you talking to a little girl is just scary." Valkyrie said.

"Uh, Billy talking's just scary." John amended. Hunter was quick to shoo him to her motorcycle.

"We already discussed this." Hunter said, "You try talking to one kid at that school and the teachers and security will be all over your ass. Cypher can get in, get her, and get out."

Billy muttered something under his breath, and it seemed that the conversation was over and done with.

There they separated, with John riding on the back of Hunter's motorcycle.

The ride itself through Denver was not too special, outside a stop at a Microdeck store so John could buy the sunglasses he needed. Solid black, wraparound, cheap but durable, and with just enough electronic add-ons to get by in the school.

The streets were relatively quiet at the late hour, and the border crossing from the CAS sector into the UCAS sector so dull that John wondered if the crossing guards were trained chimpanzees. Ultimately it was the destination that surprised John.

Hunter lived within two kilometers north of the subway tunnel John frequently used to reach the surface. Also as John lived almost two kilometers north of the boundary to the Aurora Warrens, Hunter lived further north from there and in a much nicer neighborhood.

John was also told by Hunter that she did not live alone, but with another woman who worked as an on call forensic expert for Denver's law enforcement agencies. She happened to be gone when they arrived, of which John was glad. During the night John went through the e-book at least once. Within he found a few rules he knew he would have to be careful about, one of which included no hidden commlinks. He figured that having an active commlink, coupled with a drone's inability to properly register himself as a node, would let him walk about the school without having to go through the irritation of suppressing his technomancer abilities.

Hunter's roommate was still out when they left the next morning. Her sedan turned out to be a white Ford Spiral 115Ti, which was more of a sports car instead of a sedan. It had a back seat, but not much of one. Before leaving home, Hunter gave John a small perfume spray bottle that she said was filled with a fast acting sedative that all he had to do was get one squirt on someone's skin and they would be out for hours. She also suggested leaving his holdout pistols in the trunk before they left.

Holm Elementary, the school Catherine was enrolled in, was quite the prestigious public school. John and Hunter were there early, meeting first with the school's principal and going through all of the formalities of a new student. This also included some rather embarrassing mother-son, lovey dovey stuff.

So far John's forged records were working. Later Hunter left, and the principal saw to getting a school uniform for John. Once that was set he showed John to the boys' locker room where he could change. Being on his own right now was starting to unnerve John more than any hack job he had done before, or walking the dark tunnels below Denver by himself.

Changing out of his usual street clothes and into the school uniform felt quite odd to John, but not quite as much as was dressing in the boys' locker room. He got some strange looks from the other boys as he worked his way around his dark sunglasses, but at least most of them seemed to accept it when he told them he had an eye condition.

The principle was waiting for John just outside the locker room door. From there he got a personal escort to his first period class. Algebra. Along the way he logged into the school's node. He planned on monitoring it just in case his files did not hold up.

Having no memory at all of going to any school, John had no idea just how much he really knew. His mind was sharp and quick, but that meant little if you needed to know how to calculate the volume of a cylinder and did not understand the concept of pi. Halfway through the algebra class, however, John figured he knew a lot as he felt absolutely bored to death with the teacher's lecture. More than once he had to fight the urge to pipe up with the correct answer right away while other students seemed to struggle.

Catherine in particular was having a very difficult time. In an effort to try and get closer to her, John had managed to get in with her workgroup. It had actually been the teacher's idea since her group seemed to be struggling the most and John seemed to be quite the algebraic genius.

The rest of the school day seemed to drag on for the most part. During an Earth sciences class, a subject Catherine seemed to do okay in, John had the displeasure of meeting one of her unfavorable classmates. His name was Brad Watkins, and he had recently hit puberty. Aside from the constant bragging about it this would not have been so bad if he had not also expressed as an ork. On more than one occasion did John have a chance to make a remark at Brad's expense, and many of them were not passed up.

There was one bright spot during the day. Shakespeare was the subject of the day in English. Romeo and Juliet in particular. Catherine got cast as Juliet and John was Mercutio. Brad was landed with the role of Count Paris. It was particularly funny to John to watch the scene where Juliet rebuked Count Paris's offer of marriage.

John got lucky during lunch and had a chance to get closer to Catherine. This actually happened to be one of her friend's idea as her friend seemed to act like the head of a welcoming committee. John wondered if this was in part because of the banter between he and Brad, and that he was deflating Brad's ego. It was also now that John noticed that Catherine was not the only person he had seen in the school so far that had any obvious cybernetics. They were not too common, but many were quite obvious. Some even had more discrete cybernetics, like for one poor boy who at first glance looked like he was an amputee until you saw the electronics inside the stump of his left arm.

Catherine herself seemed to be quite a nice girl. Not at the top of the social food chain, but not also not bitchy like many of the cheerleaders were. Her friends were of similar personality in that they were nicer people.

The rest of the day was pretty much the same as the rest until the final period. Phys Ed would have been just fine, better since it was shared with Catherine, but an expected nightmare as Brad was also in the same class.

"Alright kids," barked the ork gym teacher, "name of the game's dodge ball."

John's mind half zoned out as the teacher went over the rules of the game. It was all the same as he had already known somehow. You throw the ball at someone on the other side. If the ball is caught you are out. If you miss, you miss. If you hit someone and they can't catch the ball they are out, but a ball could be used to deflect a throw. Victory is achieved by your side being the only one left in play.

"Calvin!" barked the teacher. John barely had his hands up to catch the forcefully thrown rubber ball as it came flying at his head. Luck was with him as the ball wedged itself tight between his raised hands well before reaching his face.

"Well now, looks like you ain't blind or deaf after all." chided the teacher, making some of the students chuckle. He then proceeded to split the class into two teams. John was glad when he ended up on Catherine's side, but hated the thought of Brad and one of his goon friends being together on the other side.

The first round went quick enough, ultimately ending up with John's side losing the match. On the plus side, he had managed to attract Catherine's attention with a well timed throw that sent a ball aimed at her flying away. Brad had complained rather loudly, but the teacher said it was well within the rules. In the end it was someone else entirely that had managed to peg John. It would not be the last time John had to make such a throw, for Catherine or any of his other teammates.

The second round took longer than the first. John and the other boys devised a more defensive strategy involving protecting another boy that was an ace baseball pitcher. Catherine ended up helping out with her and some of the other girls fetching balls for the boys. Though the round still took about ten minutes, it ended with a volley of several balls from John's side at the last boy on the other team. No one was sure who scored the hit, and none of them really cared.

"Alright kids!" barked the teacher, "Since we've got more than half the period left, and I don't wanna hear any whining about ties there's gonna be a new rule to the game."

Most of the kids groaned at this news, but this piqued John's interest.

"You catch a ball you take out the thrower, and bring in a teammate as well." the teacher told them. This was met with mixed reactions, with John cheering the change. It certainly would change things up a bit.

The third match certainly took longer than the other two. There was no doubt that the better athletes would get recycled more quickly, and even he himself got called back several times by the other boys.

It was near the end of the period, and John had the unfortunate luck of being the last one left on his side. A little bit of good luck had ended up with Brad and one of his goon friends left on the other.

"You're goin' down, asshole!" Brad yelled. His friend simply added a "Yeah!"

"Watch your mouth, Brad!" barked the teacher. Brad did not seem to notice or care.

John grinned, guessing at what they would do next. Brad had gotten rather pissed off when he got bombarded with half a dozen balls earlier that round, and John figured he and his friend would try to double team him. He ran his fingers over his right ear as he put most of his weight on his left leg.

It was a remarkable show of teamwork between the two, John did have to admit. As one the two of them hurled their balls with all their might at John. Too bad their aim was not the best in the class.

Shifting to his right food, John easily dodged Brad's throw as it went wide to the left. As the other boy's ball came close, John reached out with his right hand to catch it, passed it to his left, and in a move that surprised everyone who had seen nothing but right handed throws sent the ball careening back at Brad.

Apparently stunned by the move, Brad only managed to blink before the ball slammed into his pug nosed face.

The teacher blew his whistle loudly. "Blue team wins!" he yelled. "Ten minutes left, everyone hit the showers."

Boys and girls separated to head to their respective locker rooms. Brad even tried tripping John along the way. It almost worked except that John pulled off a neat tuck and roll so smoothly that he did not even loose pace as he came back up to his feet. Considering how the teacher barked at Brad right away told John he had witnessed the attack. He only grinned as he joined the other boys like nothing happened.

Things were quite different the second time around as they changed back into their school uniforms. Many of the boys, even some from the red team, took a genuine liking to John. Even the blue team's ace thrower threw him some compliments. Another of the boys even lent a shoulder to guide John to a shower and back so he would not have to worry about his glasses getting wet.

During this time, Brad got a good lecture from the gym teacher while his friends grudgingly kept quiet and their distance. John's life on the streets likened this to having joined the more powerful of two gangs in having joined up with the more popular clique of athletes.

After the final bell rang John was feeling the best he probably ever had. Something about it all had a ring of familiarity to it, but no memories revealed themselves to him.

All that changed when John remembered that he would have to pull Catherine aside somehow, sedate her with the spray bottle Hunter had given him if he needed to, and get her to Hunter's car without being too conspicuous. It left a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was this regret?

John had just collected his things from his locker and was looking towards the main doors when he noticed Catherine was not too far ahead of him. In fact she and her friends had some unwelcomed attention.

"Stop it Brad!" cried one of Catherine's friends.

"Make us." Brad countered, slapping the girl's commlink away.

Catherine tried stomping on Brad's foot, but only hit the floor when he pulled it away.

"Maybe mommy should buy you better eyes." Brad teased, "Maybe you'll be able to see where to kick!"

"Why don't you just frag off?" John asked the larger boy as he stepped up to them.

"Why don't you, blind boy?" Brad barked back.

John saw the attack coming before Brad could have even realized, side stepping the ork boy as he rushed by. "No one has to see to smell you coming a kilometer away!" John taunted, emphasizing the taunt by waving a hand just below his nose. It was not too far from the truth as Brad did still stink of sweat. Had he even showered after P.E.?

Roaring his frustration, Brad tried again to bodily slam himself into John. Just like before, John easily stepped out of the way but added a swift kick to Brad's buttocks.

The school's node screamed out at John as someone broke through its firewall. He forced the alerts aside as Brad turned to face him. "You shouldn't play football." John chided.

"I don't…" Brad started to say.

John brought his foot up fast and hard between Brad's legs, making the ork boy cry out in a high pitched whine as he fell to his knees. "You really stink." John finished.

Their fight had drawn the attention of one of the Lone Star rent-a-cops that patrolled the halls. He had just gotten over to them and was about to pull Brad to his feet when alarms started going off all over. AROs of a fire popped up as well, all with guiding arrows to point the way to the nearest exit. John also felt more than heard an awful screeching like fingernails across a chalkboard.

"C'mon!" he said, grabbing his backpack and Catherine by the arm. He led her through the throng of other students as they all made for the exits.

"Shit." cussed John to himself, logging in through the back door he had created the night before. He cussed again when the school node gave him the access ID of the recently expelled intruder. Despite Billy's clumsy attempt at trying to hack into the school's now confused node, John opted not to waste the opportunity that came up.

"Where're we going?" Catherine asked, making no effort to fight off John's grip.

"Out!" John answered.

Once they were out of the school doors, John started scanning for Hunter's commlink.

"I can't!" Catherine cried, "I gotta meet Jack!"

"We will." John told her, slowing down as he tried to find Hunter's commlink. It was proving harder than he expected because there were so many commlinks about.

"Who're you looking for?" Catherine asked.

"My mom." John told her, "We can always meet up with Jack later."

"I can't, I really gotta find him."

John slipped his free hand into his jacket pocket and carefully pulled out the little sprayer Hunter had given him. Turning to Catherine, he said, "Trust me, we'll find him." as he slid his hand to her neck and lightly squirted some of its contents on her skin.

The sedative drug worked almost right away, Catherine's eyes turning from bright frantic to dull and listless. Weakly she nodded.

When John turned back to the street he noticed Hunter and her commlink. Half pulling, half carrying Catherine now, he made his way through the crowd to her. Horns blared overhead as the first fire trucks arrived at the school.

"What happened?" Hunter asked, holding the car door for John.

"Later. We gotta get outta here, fast." John told her. With Hunter's help he made his way to the back seat of her coup with Catherine at his side.

"Get outta here?" Catherine sleepily asked.

"Yeah." John said softly as Hunter got in the car, "Big fire, really nasty."

"Oh." Catherine said softly. "'N Jack?" she asked, fumbling with her commlink. "I gotta…"

"I'll get it." John said, easily taking the commlink from her. He made like he was having difficulties with the interface.

"What'd oo do t' Brad?" Catherine asked, "N'v'r h'rd a boy whmper…"

"Kicked him in the nuts." John told her, "It's a total system reset for any guy." Noticing she could barely keep her eyes open he turned off her commlink. By the time the link had shut itself down, Catherine was completely sedated.

"She finally asleep?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John answered.

Catherine certainly was asleep, and leaning comfortably against John as they went.

But something still bothered John. Even with her commlink turned off he kept feeling signals that should not have been there.

"You picking that up, too?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John told her.

"Here." Hunter said, reaching for something John guessed was in the glove box and passing it back to him. "It's a tag eraser. Just pass it over her body. All over. It could be in her clothing or even implanted under her skin."

Doing as he was instructed, John waved the little wand like device over Catherine's body. A signal disappeared as soon as he brought it down her right arm. After covering all over her body there was still one signal, though.

"You always got one of these?" John asked, passing it back up to Hunter.

"Some bounties tag themselves so friends can track 'em down." Hunter explained, "It's really a shitty day when your bounty's friends ambush you to rescue their friend. Now you sure you got all the tags?"

"Think so. I'll check into it." he told her as his mind slipped into VR. Tapping into the signal, John started his work at unraveling its code. Within seconds he found himself with a video feed he figured was coming from Catherine's eyes. A moment later he realized that all cybernetic eyes carried recording devices. Within two minutes he had broken his way into her eyes, stopped the recording, followed the lingering data trail to an online storage account, and hacked that account to destroy as much of the data as he could.

Once that was done, John figured it would be a good idea to take care of the evidence back at the school. He hit a snag when he found his account was wiped with the node's crash, but forgoing subtlety and time, and with the aid of a crack sprite, tore his way through the firewall. Once inside he started burning the registration data and anything he could find that tied him or Hunter to the school.

With his work seeming to be done, John brought himself back to the real world. He took a deep breath to try and relax. Looking out the window he noticed they were heading down highway 83 between the borders of the UCAS and CAS sectors.

"Didn't think it'd take that long to handle whatever that signal was." Hunter said.

"Took care of the school too." John told her, "Thought I should burn our info there." He figured Hunter knew where she was going.

"Good idea. Don't think I could've done better myself." remarked Hunter.

"Thanks. When we meet up, can I break Billy's commlinks?" John asked.

"Why'd you want to do that?" Hunter asked.

"The dumbass hacked the school." John told her, looking at Catherine, "Dunno if he tripped the fire alarm or tripped over it."

"You mean there really wasn't a fire?" Hunter asked.

"The alarm came from in the node first." John said, "Just after it sounded an alert of an intruder, and the access ID it gave me was Billy's."

Hunter groaned.

The rest of the trip was in silence, save the car's stereo, especially when it came to the border crossing into the UCAS side of Denver. About half an hour later, and deep into the Aurora Warrens, they arrived at the safe house. Valkyrie and Billy were already there, waiting, as were what John guessed was the second team.

John and a member of the second team were careful with Catherine as she was pulled from Hunter's car. Once it looked like Catherine was in good hands, John made his way over to Billy.

"What the fuck took you so long?" asked Billy.

"Hey Billy!" John called out, "You set off that fire alarm?"

"Yeah." Billy answered with a chortle, "Thought things were going a little slow. Fuckin' node dumped me, though." He rubbed the side of his head. John wondered if that was where the razorboy's internal commlink was located.

"Yeah, I know." John said, and kicked Billy up between the legs as hard and as fast as he could. He stepped back as the razorboy fell to his knees, then face first onto the ground.

"What was that for?" Valkyrie asked.

"Dumbass can't hack worth shit." John said, taking another step back from Billy. "All the subtlety of a drunk ork in a china shop. Tripped an alert as soon as he busted in." He was already forcing a virtual hand through the firewall of Billy's commlink. In the least John had to give the razorboy some credit as he first hit a simple and obvious commlink on Billy's wrist that was slaved to his better commlink he had implanted.

"Bullshit!" Billy challenged with a groan. "Paid that hacker ten large for that exploit program! It's unbeatable!"

The little bit of respect Billy had earned vanished when John tried the hole in that commlink's firewall he had found weeks ago and found that it was still there. He went in straight away and brought up a list of the programs Billy had on it and sought out the exploit he was talking about. There was only one and he grinned when he saw bad the program was, and that grin grew when he saw how old it was. The sculpting of the exploit was that of a single edged knife with a short handle and a blade that might have been six centimeters long. The program file was also very small, and there was a whole mess of extra data in the program that a good hacker would not be caught dead with.

"Leave the hackin' to the pros, dumbass. Ginsu Knife exploits are a year old at least, and were shit to begin with!" John told him, his knowledge coming from what he had read on hacker forums. He turned away and walked back to Hunter's car. He thought he heard Hunter palm slap her own forehead as he collected his holdout pistols from the trunk.

"You paid ten grand for a three year old hacking program?" Hunter asked, holding the passenger side door for John. Apparently she thought the same of such programs.

"At least we got the job done, and got paid." Valkyrie said.

Checking his commlink, John noticed that Hunter had forwarded him a sizeable portion of the payment from Ms. Johnson, with his account growing by a fat fifteen thousand nuyen!

"What the hell you getting at!" cried Billy. John guessed that he had gotten next to nothing in pay.

"Be thankful I'm giving you anything at all!" Hunter returned. "You nearly fucked up the job more than once!"

"You gimme a fair share…" Billy roared.

It happened almost too fast for John to see. Hunter's cybernetic hand flew from her arm to strike Billy in the face before falling at his feet. With a flick of her arm she whipped her hand up between the legs of the stumbling razorboy and latched onto his crotch like a wolf's jaws with its prey.

"What I'm gonna do is squeeze your nuts till they bleed unless you get outa here." Hunter growled. "So what you gonna do?"

"You bitch!" Billy yelled, then promptly screamed even higher than John expected any man to be able to do. He dropped to his knees and John winced in sympathetic pain.

"Twice in one night. Ouch." John said softly.

"What you gonna do?" Hunter asked again in a menacing tone.

Billy lifted an arm, the trio of blades popping out from his wrist. Before John could even think of making the blades slide back in, they slid back in.

"Nuh uh uh." chided Hunter, waving a finger in warning. "Now what're you gonna do?" she asked.

"I'm gonna leave." squeaked Billy.

"Good boy." Hunter said, letting go of Billy's crotch and recoiling her hand. John could barely see the myomeric wire that had connected her hand to her arm the whole time.

"Mother fucker." John heard Billy groan.

"You brought it on yourself." Valkyrie told him, walking away. "And you can walk from here." she added.

John's eyes widened. "Wow, no sympathy at all." he said softly to himself.

"Shall we get going?" Hunter asked John in a suddenly chipper tone.

It was a relatively short drive back home, mostly since John lived only a few kilometers north of the Aurora Warrens. Of course he had her drop him off nowhere near where he really lived, and made his way underground once Hunter was out of sight.

The following days were quiet once more, and John spent half the time largely working on his motorcycle. He actually did not bother dealing with the school's node to see about wiping his information he might have missed. Not only did he know he would have to go through the trouble of hacking his way back in again, but he also knew that for some reason some places did not seem to hold incriminating information about him for too long. Whatever the cause of this, John figured his school records would be nothing but a memory.

There was nothing in The Denver Daily or other news about Catherine, or any kidnappings, and John did not put much thought into why. By nightfall he had finally gotten the dog brain to accept the needed upgrades and run without actually crashing itself in ten seconds. Hopefully the smart tires would not cause the dog brain to crash.

It was relatively late into the third day after when John finally woke, and a few minutes later when he finally had cleared the fog of sleep away. Mentally he tugged on a few strands of the resonance, pulling some comics and articles his way. He skimmed the headlines and file titles for anything interesting, which usually meant nothing. Anything about cars, computers, or the local Denver gangs was interesting to him, but it seemed the gangs were still keeping things low key these days.

On the bright side he saw the Denver Ghosts had squeaked a victory against Boston 3-2.

He also looked for any news articles on kidnappings, to see if there was anything on Catherine. By now his curiosity was starting to grow as to why he and the others had to take her in the first place.

Then there was one headline that caught his attention, "Innocent Life Taken" it read, so he tapped the link.

His heart nearly stopped when he saw the first few lines saying that Catherine was dead. Reading on, his heart ran into overdrive when he read about an unknown sniper that had killed her. He swiped the ARO's aside, and it vanished like fog in sunlight.

Grabbing himself a soybar, John chomped on it while angrily looking at an AR schematic of his motorcycle and went over what he planned on doing with it. He hoped burying himself in some work would help keep Catherine out of his mind. The physical work of installing the smart tires onto his motorcycle would do.

It was about an hour later when one of his guarding microdrones sent an alert to his home's commlink. Right away he pushed his work aside and brought up the alert window.

The trigger was Shaq and his cronies. He fixed his goggles on and double checked the ammo in his pistols, making sure both were loaded with real bullets. All this while he was also listening to the go-gangers talking.

The go-gangers stopped at his door to the tunnels, and from the microdrone's viewpoint he could see that it was not a social call. One of them had brought an electronics kit and looked like he was about to try and disable the outer maglock. Remotely he unlocked it, knowing it was designed to look like it was still locked anyway.

Just as the go-ganger was about to pry the casing off, John threw the door open. With the holdout pistol in his left hand he first shot the electronics kit, the bullet sending bits of plastic flying. With the pistol in his right hand he shot at a go-ganger, intentionally missing Shaq and sending the go-ganger staggering back.

Wasting no time, John turned his right pistol onto the electrician wannabe and shot him in the chest. Already on his haunches, the go-ganger rolled back hard onto his buttocks and banged his head on the tunnel floor. He then shot a fourth time with his left pistol, scoring a point blank hit into Shaq's chest. Only after the shot was fired did John realize that none of the go-gangers had any kind of body armor at all.

The last three go-gangers only staggered back. All of them had been taken completely by surprise by the sudden and ferocious attack the lone preteen had laid on them. Even Shaq was stunned as he fell to sit on the tunnel floor, bleeding from a very real bullet wound in his chest.

"I'm in no fucking mood for your shit, Shaq!" John growled, keeping his pistols leveled on the two most dangerous looking go-gangers he had not yet shot. He could see the fear in their eyes, particularly since this was the first time he had not only pulled a second holdout pistol on them, but also used lethal ammunition.

"How the…" Shaq started to ask, only to shut himself up as John leveled a pistol his way.

"Shut it!" John barked, "Get the fuck outta here! I'm not in the mood for your shit!"

One of the go-gangers twitched as if to move on John. Without thought or hesitation, John had his left pistol on the go-ganger and shot him too. When it seemed the last two were not getting the message, he aimed both pistols at them.

"Get me outta here!" Shaq cried, now realizing the bad shape he was in. Blood was flowing freely from the hole in his chest and it was staining his otherwise dirty white undershirt a brilliant red. John felt Shaq would live and was merely playing up the severity of the wound.

Though his eyes were obscured to the go-gangers, John glared at them as they gathered themselves and left. Once they were out of his sight he double checked the outer maglock and secured himself back inside.

"How the fuck did he do that?" John heard one go-ganger ask as they passed by one of his microdrones in the tunnel.

"You left your 'links off?" another asked. John recognized him as the electrician that almost got to his maglock.

"Yeah." groaned everyone.

The electrician looked about, and once even looked straight at the microdrone itself. He said, "There's no WiFi out here, so he can't have any drones." Apparently he either did not see the microdrone at all, or just brushed it off as dead.

John grinned devilishly to himself. What they did not know was that he had strung actual wire to each of the places a microdrone now hid. With all of the exposed piping, a plethora of hiding places, and the lack of wireless signals the drones were as good as invisible. Even MAD scanners would be useless because of the metal pipes, despite the metal wiring used to keep the drones powered.

"He sure ain't awakened, either." another said. John had suspected if he was an adept or just someone who could read auras. Then again, he had also heard of gear on the street that could detect awakened people and such.

"He's gonna…" Shaq said, but John could not hear any more as they had passed beyond the drone's hearing.

John picked up his cheap commlink, forwarding one of his contacts to it and hitting send.

"Merlin's Antiquities."

"Hey Merlin? It's Cypher. Listen, I'm gonna need an upgrade of firepower."

"Well, not much in the way of upgrades for holdouts." Merlin said, "Flechete ammo, or a needler, maybe."

"No, a needler's not gonna be any good." He could imagine the tiny needles bouncing off of Shaq's thick skull as he shot at them.

"Just how big you thinking?" Merlin asked. "Assault rifles'll kick you on your ass, and aren't exactly discrete."

"Well, I don't wanna waste ammo." John said, "But the local ganger wannabes ain't takin' hints. Anything like a needler's just gonna piss 'em off."

"Meet me in VR." Merlin said, "I think it'll be easier."

John lied down on his bed, shifting his perceptions to virtual reality.

"Glad you could make it." Merlin said as John logged into the showroom. Merlin's icon looked like his name suggested, a gray bearded wizard with a pointed cap of dark blue and a matching robe all decorated in silver stars. He held a gnarled wooden staff in one hand. The sculpting of the chat room itself looked like a fanciful wizard's laboratory, with all sorts of outlandish devices decorating the room. The two of them stood in a summoning circle decorated with a mishmash of random runes.

"You've got something to show me?" John asked.

"Yup. How about this?" Merlin said, bringing up an array of icons of many different heavy pistols into existence with a simple gesture of his staff.

"Now this one," Merlin said, bringing around a large looking revolver between them, "is a Ruger Super Warhawk. It'll put big holes in people, and I have people swear to me they can put a dent in a troll's skull if you've gotta club one over the head. They're normally single action, but I've got a few modified as double action."

John took the pistol's icon in hand and looked it over. It certainly looked intimidating. It was heavy and a bit unwieldy as John tried out holding it with one hand. He then remembered Omar Chavez a few weeks ago, a slight looking elderly man who wielded the same kind of pistol.

"What's the difference?" John asked, holding the pistol and sighting it down the barrel.

"Single actions are slower to shoot." Merlin explained, taking the icon from John. "You've gotta re-cock the hammer after every shot." He demonstrated with the hammer, pulling it back, squeezing the trigger, and pulling the hammer back again. "Double actions pretty much work like semiautomatics. Just squeeze the trigger for every shot." He squeezed the trigger several times, the hammer cocking back and slamming hard with each shot.

"You sure you got one that won't break if I have to club a troll?" he asked.

"Certainly do." Merlin said.

"Then I'll go with a double action model." John told him.

"Stop by and I can get the grip made for you."

"What?" John asked.

"The one I got's made for a custom grip." Merlin explained. "I don't have the parts to fit it with a stock grip at the moment."

"Oh, okay." John said as he looked over a few others. He stopped at one that looked quite interesting.

"Ares Predator IV." Merlin said, spying what John was looking at. He gestured with his staff and brought the icon around closer. "A very popular and reliable model. Got caseless and standard models on that one. It's also semiautomatic, so you won't be sending bullets all over the place. A built in smartlink's standard, so you can see where you're about to shoot."

"I'll take two of those, caseless models." John said. "I'll also want a spare mag for each and enough high explosive rounds to fill them all. I'll also take a pack of 20 sticky shocks for the holdouts. The dumb fucks must have orks for mamas their skull's're so thick."

"I'll buy back the leftovers if you're goin' for a complete trade-out." Merlin told him.

"And holsters?" John asked.

"I think I got what you'll like." Merlin told him.


	4. Run 04 : Thrash The Body Electric

Run 04 : Thrash The Body Electric (based on the mission written by Mark DelPrincipe)

Heavy metal music played loudly in John's underground apartment. The violent sounding lyrics along with the harsh music seemed to help with his mood. John recently had collected various songs from throughout the matrix, some of which had been made prior to Crash 2.0 and even Crash 1.0.

It was not for the first time did John handle his new pistols. The twin Ares Predator IVs were a bit more pricey than he had expected, but ultimately were worth it. In addition to being almost ten times as expensive as a stock model, both pistols had two extended capacity magazines, and Merlin also claimed that John could use them to fend off a monomolecular blade and still shoot them.

But that was not all regarding the two new pistols. In handling them, learning their weight and feel, John had quickly learned how to thread a complex form that allowed him to reflexively interact with the built-in smartgun in the Predators, and it was initially a perplexing sensation in seeing where the pistols were pointed at and a neat little crosshair and lines in his field of vision. Whenever he held either Predator it was like having another eyeball in his hand. Despite this odd sensation everything about the Ares Predator IV pistol felt right, and outside of his natural hacking and technomancer abilities it was the first time anything had felt so right.

There was that, and the heavy pistols just seemed to feel right in his hands, as opposed to the holdouts or his new revolver.

John had just holstered his Predators for what may have been the tenth time when his commlink started beeping with an incoming call. It was Tabby, so he hit accept.

"Hey kiddo." said Tabby as her feline face showed up in a new ARO.

"Hey." John returned flatly, not quite meeting her gaze.

"Got a job for you if you're feeling up for it." Tabby told him.

"I dunno." John told her, bringing up an ARO schematic of his motorcycle. He began looking over things he still needed to do to get it working.

"Ya know, I heard about what happened…" Tabby started to say.

"Yeah!" yelled John, "Whatdaya know?" He stared right at her, wishing they were face to face.

"That you're taking that last job way too hard." Tabby sternly said. "Listen, I know it's only been a few days, and you don't have to like it at all. In fact you can say 'fuck it all' to this kind of shit if you want. What you've gotta do is accept that this kind of shit happens, and if it doesn't happen to you it'll happen to someone else. If you're not involved somehow in Denver, it's happening in New York, or Seattle, or any of a dozen fucked up feral cities you could name. No one says you have to like it."

John's eyes hardened, mostly because he looked up to the shelf where Catherine's commlink still sat. "You hear anything about who shot her?" he asked.

"Not a peep." Tabby told him, "But it's also a bit soon for word to make the shadows on something like this. It's only been a few days. Give it time. Trust me. I hear a peep you'll be the first to know."

"And the job?" John asked.

"I think it'll be good for you." Tabby said in a much more chipper tone. "If it is what I think it is, it'll help you out some."

"Okay." John said softly.

The meet with the Johnson was at a place called the Aspen Chalet. John made sure his pistols and revolver were loaded, extra magazines in his pockets as well as a speed loader, and then was off to a coyote path to the CAS sector of Denver. After walking a few blocks from a parking garage on 6th Ave he caught a GridCab. He gave it the address for the Aspen Chalet.

Along the way, John hacked the GridCab's dog brain. Inside he edited the information to say there was no fare, taking care of any recordings in the process, and that it was on its way to pick up a fare at the destination instead. It seemed to work as the GridCab did not stop until they reached their destination, with a brief pause at the highway 40 border checkpoint.

The Aspen Chalet was looking far from what John expected to see. Rather than a B&B or some random greasy spoon truck stop, it was an upper class looking restaurant with all of the fixings. From the outside the building looked to have been built with all natural wood, giving it a bit of a rustic appearance, but the very large bay windows screamed wealth and opulence. This included obvious security scanners in the door frame and heavily augmented staff to back it up.

One of the two guards stopped John as he walked through the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to leave." he said.

John looked up at the larger man. "I'm here to meet with Mr. Johnson." he told him.

The larger man took a step back and gestured to a side door. "If you'll just step this way then."

"Uh, I don't think so." John replied.

Silently his commlink alerted John to an incoming transmission request. Based on the name it looked like it was one of the two door guards, so John hit a one time accept.

Within John's vision came up a new ARO that showed the results from the scanners in the doorframe when he passed through. It had highlighted his two Predators, the Warhawk, and his spare magazines. The text at the bottom said that all weapons had to be checked.

"Oh, that's all." John said a little more lightly.

Once his pistols were discretely checked in, John was escorted by a waiter to a private dining room in the back.

The room itself was nicely decorated in light wood tones, with nice and large windows that gave a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountains beyond. Decorations were otherwise sparse, relying on the carved wood paneling instead.

At the head of a matching wood table was the Johnson, with two bodyguards. The bodyguards looked like a cross between a professional body builder and the 'Men-In-Black'. The Johnson himself looked like he would be able to take care of himself, standing out slightly in an unpretentious blue suit. At the center of the table was an odd device that John could not readily identify.

Despite having walked and caught a cab, John was surprised to find himself the first to arrive. This, and the excessive amount of security made John feel really, really nervous. It also did not help that John felt way underdressed for the place.

"I'm sorry son," Mr. Johnson said, "but you will have to leave. I'm expecting a private party shortly." His voice suggested this guy was higher up the corporate food chain than John expected.

"Doesn't pay to be first." muttered John as he walked in anyway. There was quite a bit of WiFi going on in the room alone, and John started mentally tugging at the threads and strands to figure it all out. His virtual hands slowly weaving what might have been the threads of a tapestry.

"And it certainly does not pay to be here at all if you are not invited." Mr. Johnson told him sternly.

John had already identified two weapons carried by the bodyguards as active, and followed their data trails to commlinks and the bodyguard's onyx black wraparound shades. There was a problem soon found in that the data threads did not feel right.

"Yeah, next time I'll make sure everyone's here before I just walk on in." John said a little more boldly. He could feel a headache coming on, but at the same time he found the problem with the data threads. They were all encrypted, and the more he worked them over the more the encryption seemed to fall away like the flaking skin of a sunburn. There was more WiFi going on than just this, and John redoubled his efforts to figure out why.

"Actually, it would be best if you did not." Mr. Johnson said. With a gesture of one hand he waved his bodyguard into action.

John felt like hitting his own face. All of the extra activity was interconnected to a hidden commlink Mr. Johnson had on himself somewhere. His eyes felt like they were about to explode into fireballs as he examined this commlink very extensively.

"Well, if you don't want the hacker you hired…" John said.

"If you were that hacker." interrupted Mr. Johnson.

"then you can tell Tabby she don't owe you anything." John finished, along with his analysis of Mr. Johnson's commlink. All the security had apparently tripped something in the back of John's mind, and finding an armed and nasty looking data bomb in the Johnson's commlink was justified.

"Who?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Tabby. She called me about work, sayin' to come here." John said a little snippily.

"I did not request any children." Mr. Johnson said sternly.

"Yeah, bet you asked for a hacker. That's me." said John as he mentally spun up a disarm form to deal with the data bomb. Right away he applied it to the data bomb, and it dissolved into digital smoke.

"Pardon me while I choose not to believe you." Mr. Johnson replied.

John logged into Mr. Johnson's commlink. Inside was a bare bones commlink, lacking anything in the way of personalization. What was inside was another persona. The way it kept analyzing things, John figured it was a white hat, a security hacker working for Mr. Johnson.

"Now you are not invited, so my guard will see you to the door." Mr. Johnson said.

There was a drawback to the whole network that John saw. The guard was also being monitored by the same spider, and his access identifications were quite visible for John to see. Mimicking the guard's access ID, John commanded the pistol to make it empty the chamber and eject the magazine.

The bodyguard looked at his pistol as the loaded magazine clunked at his feet.

"Yeah, right." John said, stepping around to the other side of the table while the guard picked up his lost magazine. He bolstered his stealth form as the white hat in Mr. Johnson's commlink started going crazy with analyzing every icon there.

"Hold it." Mr. Johnson said. At least the bodyguard was well trained, grabbing the fallen magazine and taking a step back before he reloaded his Predator. "Who was it that called you? Calleigh?"

"Tabby." snipped John.

It was a painfully quiet minute before Mr. Johnson said, "Relax, you can sit."

John jerked a chair away from the table and sat down.

"Interesting." Mr. Johnson said. "You are definitely not what I was expecting. And most certainly was not expecting a minor." The bodyguard holstered his pistol and stepped back to where he was standing when John entered the room.

"Guess I should expect this." He brought up an ARO of the chalet's menu.

"Go ahead and order." Mr. Johnson told him.

Much of the menu was seafood and Native American, and fortunately hamburgers were on the list. As ritzy as the place was, John figured the food would all be real. He selected a large barbeque burger with lots of fixings, a large buzz cola, and a large double chocolate fudge milkshake. Just as he hit send he noticed Hunter walking in.

"Didn't expect to see you here already, Cypher." said Hunter, taking the chair between himself and Mr. Johnson.

"Guess I got lucky with the traffic." John said with a smile.

Valkyrie was next to arrive. "I'd say you were." she said, apparently having heard John's remark.

Last to arrive was Billy, and he did not look too pleased.

"Just how the fuck did you get here before me?" he asked.

"Did ya stop to chat up a joygirl?" John asked.

Hunter glared at him. John took this as his cue to shut up. It was not difficult since Billy seemed to realize he would lose another verbal fight if he tried to come up with a witty comeback. Instead he took a sip of his cola, the sugar sweet drink tickling his tongue as he drank.

"Now let's all go ahead and order food, then we can discuss the terms of the job over lunch." Mr. Johnson said.

The wait staff were rather professional when they delivered the food, saying nothing as plates and glasses were brought in. John did feel an awful lot of encrypted WiFi activity going on, and figured it was from the staff as the activity dropped as soon as they had left.

Wasting no time, John had his hamburger in both hands and his first bite was a big one. Real food always seemed to be more delicious than the soy-byproduct of McHugh's. Glancing over to Billy, he found it odd that he was somewhat civilized in eating, and surprised that the razorboy had two huge porterhouse steaks.

Mr. Johnson sipped his Riesling and took a small bite of his grilled salmon before he started his pitch. "I would like you all to start a campaign of harassment, vandalism, and sabotage against a business facility in the Pueblo sector and its personnel for the next week. I would prefer no lethal force at all, but widespread disruption of their business operations."

John could not help but smile at this as he chewed. Tabby was right, this would be good to do. After stewing for a week over what had happened to Catherine this would be perfect to vent some frustrations.

"Now by no lethal force…" Billy started to ask.

"He means we don't kill anyone working there." John butted in.

"I hope you're okay if it's an accident." Valkyrie said.

"Of course." Mr. Johnson told them. "As long as it legitimately is an accident. I am well aware that spirits can cause an 'accident', so please refrain from that."

"Sure." Valkyrie replied.

"Pay itself will be three thousand nuyen each up front," Mr. Johnson said, "with an additional eight thousand nuyen each once the job has been completed to our satisfaction."

"I'm in." John said with a mouthful of hamburger.

"Sure, count me in." added Hunter.

"I dunno." Billy said, trying to act thoughtfully.

John saw Hunter palm her forehead into her free hand. Valkyrie rolled her eyes.

"What is wrong?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Chromb domb tinks he cam megotiate." John answered just after he had taken another bite of his hamburger.

"He what?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"I can too negotiate." declared Billy.

"No, you can't." Hunter told him flat out and without a moment of hesitation.

John smiled, especially since Hunter sounded like a stern mother scolding a child. He was just about to ask if Billy had spent all his pay from last week's run on beer and hookers, but figured it would be best to just keep quiet instead.

When he did notice Mr. Johnson looking expectantly at them, he said, "Don't worry about Billy, anyway. He can't count."

"Hey! I can count!" Billy exclaimed.

"No, the math SPU in your skull does the counting for you." John countered.

"Think you can do better?" Billy challenged.

John grunted. "Why should I?" he asked.

Billy responded with a 'psssht'.

"We could probably loot the place and fence the goods." John said, "Who knows how much extra we could get from that?"

Billy's eyebrows raised, like a forty watt light bulb had just been switched on inside his head.

"I am afraid I may have misjudged you earlier, Cypher." Mr. Johnson said.

John smiled.

"Besides, I already speed hacked Johnson's commlink and the spook inside never caught me." John continued.

"And you're admitting it?" asked an astonished Hunter.

"He already knows." John said.

Mr. Johnson said nothing.

"So?" Billy asked.

"So, what?" John asked back.

"Why not ask for more?" Billy asked impatiently.

"Why?" John asked back, "You're the non-wiz one of the team. I ain't gonna help your slack ass get more cred."

Mr. Johnson chuckled.

"Fuck. Alright." Billy finally relented.

"Good to hear." Mr. Johnson told them, he pulled several credsticks out and pushed them to the middle of the table.

Right away John reached for them.

"Hey!" cried Billy as he too reached for the credsticks.

John was just as quick to get his hand back with a single credstick in hand, and felt lucky he still had that hand.

"Give 'em around." Hunter said sternly. "We each get three." she added as she held up a single finger.

Billy looked like he was reluctant to give back the extra credsticks he had apparently managed to grab. John barely noticed Valkyrie slipping her own three credsticks into her commlink.

When he slotted his own credsticks he saw that there was one thousand nuyen on each. These funds got transferred over to a credstick he had more discretely plugged into the commlink in his goggles.

"Here are some recent photos of the facility you are to hit." Mr. Johnson said, pulling out some hardcopy photographs. They were all identical and an overhead view of what looked like a small factory complex. "The place is Rocky Mountain Dynamics, or RMD for short. You can find it on Bow Mar in the Pueblo sector, near Marston lake."

John remembered reading a tag line saying the place was under an investigation of some kind. Now he was wishing he had read the news article.

"What about operating hours, and security?" Hunter asked.

"There are two work shifts." Mr. Johnson answered, "First one working from seven a.m. to three-thirty p.m., and the second working from three p.m. to eleven-thirty p.m. I do not know what may be on site for security, but I would expect there is some form of security presence there at all times. And do remember that casualties are to be kept to a minimum."

"So no cappin' the rent-a-cops." Hunter said sternly, looking at Billy.

"Hey!" Billy cried defensively.

John finished up his hamburger, washing the last bite down with a good mouthful of his milkshake.

Mr. Johnson pulled a pager out and handed it to Hunter. John noticed there was a folded piece of paper included with it. "I'll send you a page if I need you to stop early, and the note has a number to use to reach me next week so we can arrange a meet. I hope you have everything you need." Mr. Johnson said, standing. "Feel free to use the room for some planning. You have it until three." John sipped his cola as he watched the bodyguard walk behind Mr. Johnson on their way out.

"So what ideas do we have?" asked Hunter.

"I could hack their node, mess with production." Billy said.

John loosed a rather loud and impressive belch before speaking. "You can't hack worth shit." he told Billy. "Last run you nearly fucked things up when you crashed a node after lumbering into it like a drunken troll."

"Hey! I got through the firewall, didn't I?" Billy challenged.

"Point of hackin's to get in without being noticed." John returned.

"He's right." Hunter added. "Leave the computer hacking to the professionals."

John stuck his tongue out at Billy.

"Besides," Hunter continued, "crashing their node won't slow them down enough. They'll be back up and running in less than a minute."

"So? They'll lose their work." Billy said.

"And they'll have backups." Hunter countered. "At most they might lose half an hour's work. No, it's not good at all. Unless you happen to know any technomancers who can make sure those backups are destroyed."

John's heart leapt into his throat when Hunter mentioned technomancers.

"Like hell I'd know any brain butchers!" Billy yelled.

"What about robbing the place?" Valkyrie asked. "Mr. Johnson didn't look like he'd mind if we'd do that when Cypher brought it up."

John extended his mind into the matrix, looking up RMD's node, location, and any other dirt he might be able to find. Hacking to crash the place may have been an obviously bad idea, but the more typical stuff a hacker would do certainly was not.

"Doable." Hunter said, "Especially if we can make sure to wipe out their current stock and all. Hope they've got trucks."

The node itself was not too hard to find at all, and from the outside looked like a giant electrical transformer with a mess of circuits and electrical doodads all over it. Passing to within the node itself John got the impression of a factory store front, with lists of inventory and prices and such hanging on interior surfaces. There was some activity going on, which all gave John the sense of 'business as usual'.

"Hey, Cypher!" he heard Hunter call out.

"Huh? What?" John asked.

"You done here?" Hunter asked, "We're heading out now." John noticed Valkyrie and Billy were already heading out the door.

"Was kinda thinkin' of hackin' the node." John told her.

"You can do that while we case the place." Hunter replied.

With nothing to argue against that, John drained the last of his drinks just before they left. Well, almost as he hit the restrooms and the weapons check before they were really underway.

It was almost an hour and a half later when they all met up near RMD. Along the way Hunter had given John the pager. He accepted it as long as he could get a disposable commlink to connect the pager to, and have it forward any pages to him. Hunter then suggested stashing it someplace, which they did. Both pager and commlink were left buried next to a random tree along West Alameda Avenue in Lakewood, and after John had programmed the commlink to burn the forwarding access ID after the first use or after ten days, whichever would come first.

John rested in Valkyrie's pickup truck, and while the others scoped out the factory complex itself he was busy probing the conglomeration of circuits and electrical crap that made up its node. It took him about three hours to get in.

With administrative access and an inside view of the RMD node, John initially found it to be a rather dull place. Sure there were a few live users flitting about, their icons appearing like electric utility linemen, and even a few IC that looked like freaky erector set robots, but as John moved about the node found that there was nothing security related going on or available. He had access to inventory lists, scheduling, e-mail traffic, and could track every single RFID tag in the place, but there was nothing about security cameras or door locks anywhere.

"How's it going, kiddo?" Hunter asked over their network she was hosting.

"I don't think I got the whole place." John told her.

"You've been at it for a few hours." Hunter replied, "Could be a few more before you're in."

"But I'm in." John countered, "Got inventory, schedules for just about everything except when someone goes to take a dump, but no security." With a virtual hand on the shipping file he lifted away a copy. An icon looking like a mail slot appeared and he slid it through to send it to Hunter.

"Then something's up." came Valkyrie's voice. "There's a camera for sure at the guard shack. I'm looking at it."

"Try running a scan from inside their node, Cypher." advised Hunter, "They may have it running parallel to their operations node. That, or they should have the security node nested inside their operations node."

"Okay, I'm on it." John told them, bracing his mind for the task to come. He figured he would have already found a nested node, and would have to do something else to scan around as Hunter had suggested.

Reaching to the resonance itself, John compiled what he hoped would be a potent crack sprite. The sprite itself seemed to appear like a reverse explosion of snowflakes, coalescing into a floating skull without a jawbone. Attached beneath it, just below its teeth, was a radar scanner display screen, its right eye socket was filled by a red camera lens, with a pair of thin mechanical arms ending in clamps protruding from below the skull and a set of four mechadendrite cables flitting about from the back where a person's spine would normally be.

Despite John's lack of skill with sprites, this unregistered sprite floated in front of him in the RMD node awaiting its first task.

"Seek out all hidden nodes connected to this node, identify them, and give me their info." John ordered the sprite, giving it the ID and password of one of the staff to access the node with.

The sprite wobbled, softly beeping a few tones in acknowledgment before it flittered off. To John's relief it was back seconds later, projecting an ARO that gave John the info he needed. That was not to say he liked it.

"Shit." John cussed over the network.

"You fuck up?" Billy asked.

"Shut it." chided Hunter, "Okay kiddo, what's wrong?"

"They got good security." John told them. "There's a shit load of short range nodes all hidden in the complex I think connects all the cameras and locks."

"How short we talkin' about?" asked Hunter.

"Short as the pipsqueak." answered Billy.

"Shut up." groaned Valkyrie.

John looked at the ARO. "Forty meters at best," he told them, "but that's inside. Maybe a few meters beyond the building."

"What about that outside camera?" Hunter asked.

John looked over the ARO again. "Nuh uh."

"Shouldn't a commlink or something extend the range?" Valkyrie asked.

"Found something you can't hack, huh…" Billy said, but it sounded like he was cut off.

"Dumbass." John heard Hunter mutter. "Camera's probably wired on a fiber op, if it's real. The security node's likely set to deny anything but direct peer to peer connections. Okay, what do you need to hack that node?" she asked.

"A 'link with a few hundred meters range I can slave plugged into that camera should do it." John answered. He also felt the same about the security node as Hunter, though did not quite how to say it.

"I can take care of the guard, if you can get the rest." Valkyrie said.

"Do it." Hunter told him.

It was a few minutes before John heard anything. "Alright, guard's out."

Almost a minute later came Hunter's voice. "Okay Cypher, I got a spare 'link plugged into the security camera." She then forwarded John the info he needed to take full control of the commlink.

John wasted no time tracking down the link, accessing and slaving it straight to his own mind, and setting it to hidden mode so hopefully no one would detect it. "Got it." he said. He hoped Hunter had managed to stash the commlink somewhere where it would not be spotted.

"How long you think it'll take?" Hunter asked.

"Few hours, maybe." John answered.

"Was Mr. Johnson right about the work shifts?" Valkyrie asked.

Bringing up an ARO, John looked over the work schedules. "Yeah, work ends 'round eleven thirty."

"I'm heading back." Hunter told them, "We all should hang back 'til midnight at least. Hopefully that guard'll think he just nodded off."

Three hours later John signed himself into RMD's security node and there was still about two hours left in the work day for the men and women at RMD. It took a little effort to decrypt the security node, and after that John occupied himself with looking through the various security cameras. It was not too long after that when he grew bored with this.

"Hey Cypher," said Hunter, "you cut your way in yet?"

"Yeah." John answered, feeling rather tired from the hours of rather monotonous work. "Just decrypted it."

"Why don't you pull back a bit but don't log off the nodes."

John shifted his perceptions back to the real world, leaving what he saw in the two nodes as AROs at the bottom of his field of vision. He groaned as he moved, sitting up in the sedan's back seat. "Now I see why some hackers cyber out." he said. His whole body felt stiff.

"No doubt." added Hunter, "Figured you'd be starving by now." She held up a sack from Nacho Mama along with a liter jug of buzz cola.

Something else was bugging John. "Gotta take care of something first." he told her. After a few minutes alone with the bushes to empty his bladder he was ready to chow down. It was cheap fast food, but oddly it also tasted good. Realizing how hungry he was while he ate, he suddenly remembered something about hunger being the best spice. Now if only he could figure out where he had heard that before.

While he ate, John listened to the others as they discussed about what to do to mess with RMD. Somewhere along the line he asked about the guard, to which Hunter told him the guard acted like he had fallen asleep on the job. So far, so good.

Ultimately everyone opted to loot the facility of its stock, though Hunter had argued for only what would have hurt RMD's production quotas. Billy had opted for everything because he was a greedy jackass, but Valkyrie had actually agreed with Billy because he felt the theft of specific inventory would be suspicious while clearing everything out would help cover their tracks. Hunter ultimately relented to Valkyrie's logic, not Billy's greed. Though John did not say anything, he also agreed with Valkyrie in taking all of RMD's stock.

John rode with Valkyrie and Billy while Hunter went off on her own. The front gate guard was taken out, again, and they ultimately met up with Hunter around at the back of the warehouse. She told them she had knocked out the other guard that was on patrol along the fence. During this time John wrote up some account access for the others to use so they could use the factory drones to do all the work.

During this time Hunter and Billy used the drones on the factory floor to load all of RMD's inventory into the semi trucks.

There was not much else John had to do after that, aside from monitoring the nodes to make sure security was not alerted, so he walked about the factory complex while the others went to looting the loading dock. He ultimately found himself in the factory's break room. Looking about the empty room, a wicked set of thoughts began to bubble in his mind.

Straight away John went for the refrigerators. He guessed that some of the staff would leave their lunches or leftover lunches behind for one reason or another. He was right as opening both revealed half full refrigerators with sack lunches and other foodstuffs. He started by grabbing a carton of soy milk, opened it, and threw it across the break room. It made a less than satisfying mess as it flew. He then grabbed another, a soykaf creamer, opened it and threw it with all of his might across the room. It too was less than satisfactory in the mess it trailed.

Determined not to let good food go to waste, John grabbed each and every carton individually and threw them across the room. He then pulled a sack lunch and opened it to examine the contents. There was a tasty looking sandwich within, but one bite revealed it looked better than it tasted so he threw it. He took a bite of a small apple, and finding it somewhat tasty took a second bite as he perused through the fridge.

The half eaten apple sailed back over his shoulder when John spied something in the back that looked really intriguing. Hiding behind some sack lunches was a six pack of beer. He liberated the pack and tore it open. He smiled wide when he saw six aluminum cans within.

Like the typical boy might do, John popped one of the cans of beer open and took a tentative sip of the carbonated beverage. The taste was rather foul, but not as bad as he expected as he drank. When he finally paused for a breath, John found he had emptied half of the 300ml can, and loosed a satisfying belch. The half empty can went flying somewhere behind him.

More sack lunches were violated as John checked their contents, took a bite or three of what looked interesting, and threw the rest throughout the break room. Every so often he would hit the six pack of beer for another can, chugging about half of it before throwing the can somewhere. There were two left before he grew bored with this. That, and he had pretty much emptied the refrigerators of their contents. This also included the freezers, leaving all of the doors wide open.

Then came the cabinets, their drawers, and their contents. Packets of sugar, salt, and pepper were ripped open and spread about the place.

Looking about, John felt that something was missing. The whole room looked more like a toddler's nursery after the kids has a field day making their own fun. It was then that John realized that the walls were completely lacking in any decoration of any kind. The walls were his canvas as he tore into the condiment packets of ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise and started finger painting and more all over the place. During this John went through another can of beer, half of its contents getting thrown somewhere into the room.

Once the break room looked a thousand percent improved, he scraped his hands clean on the doorway, grabbed the last can of beer, and left.

Popping door locks as he went, John found himself in what looked like a manager's office with a corner desk and two extra chairs where employees might wait for their interrogation. With the door behind the desk looking curiously interesting John went for it.

With his virtual hand in the security node, the door opened for him at his command. Inside was a neat collection of various office supplies. John opted to rummage about to see if there was anything interesting within. Finding nothing he clumsily climbed over the pile he had made and left.

There were lots of interesting looking gadgets and gizmos around, each and every one of them as confusing as the next to John as he inspected each and every one of them before tossing it over his shoulder or giving it a baseball pitcher's fast ball. Once this bored him he made his way into the next room.

Even with computers having been around for over a century, the micronization of computer chips, the advent of optical memory storage and more, some things did not seem to change much. At least one of those were the need for a large room with dozens of computer towers to act as a server farm. He opted to pass them by, but kept a thought in mind for when he would make his way back.

Next was a long hallway, but there were bathrooms not too far off. Both the men's and women's rooms were sabotaged, the toilets and sinks all stopped up with as many paper towels and other junk he could find and let the water run.

Next was the general manager's office, which John almost forgot was holding the factory's guards.

At the end of the hallway was the reception room. Though there did not seem to be much off hand that he could do, his bladder was screaming at him. So he used one of the potted plants to relieve himself.

On his way back to he found a door he apparently missed. This lead to what he figured was a cube farm. This room seemed very dull, save for a few personal effects tacked to the walls. It was not until he sat down in a chair and spun around a few times before something came to mind. Each of the office chairs had five wheeled feet, and John used his Warhawk to bash a single foot of each chair to uselessness.

Once he was sure each chair had been treated, John headed back the way he came. When he reached the server room, he remembered that thought that had come to him earlier.

"Youz guys done using the drones?" John asked over the network.

"Just about." Hunter answered, "Why?"

"Jus thinkin' how much I can fuck this place." he told her, using his authorization to unlock all of the doors on the complex.

He then started unplugging cables and plugging them back in elsewhere however he pleased and wherever they might fit. He could feel the node itself start to scream its protests as it tried to do its work and encountered error after error. With a painful screeching, much like fingernails on a chalk board except through his brain, the nodes began corrupting itself. John had to completely log himself off and cut himself off from the matrix itself as he kept messing with the cables.

The physical monitors themselves were already crazy, and once they had all winked out John figured the whole system had crashed. Satisfied that the factory's nodes had crashed, John made his way back to the break room. He felt a need to empty his bladder again, and so chose a corner to relieve himself.

"What the fuck happened in here?" John heard Hunter cuss from the doorway just as John had zipped up his fly.

"Juss doin' our jub." John told her as he tried to walk through the break room, "Juss relly fuckin' da place up!" Why now of all times was the room pitching around like a sailboat in a storm?

"More like messing around." Hunter commented. She was either heedless of the mess, or just did not care, as she walked up to meet John. "What the hell?" she exclaimed, tearing the half filled can of beer from John. "Just how many of these have you had?"

Saying nothing, John grabbed the box and handed it to her. "Found it hiding in the fridge!" he giggled.

"You opened it?" Hunter asked, taking the box from him.

John nodded, not noticing the world spinning about. He almost did not realize his hands were now empty.

"C'mon," Hunter said, "Time to go."

"Go?" John asked, "I already went. Over there."

"Great." muttered Hunter as she forcefully led John to the loading docks. Before he realized it he was outside with the others.

"So the little boy got himself smashed?" asked Billy, now crouching in front of John.

John wondered when Hunter told the others about the beer, but could not say anything. He did not want to say anything. The cool, crisp lake air was smelling good despite the mild industrial pollution in the air, all until Billy was practically right up in his face.

Without warning, before John could even think to turn away, what felt like half the beer he drank earlier that night came rushing back up.

"Holy shit!" Billy cussed as he jumped back. At least things smelled a little better, and for some reason his stomach felt a little better too.

"You alright?" asked Valkyrie.

"I think…" John started to say, but then got a whiff of Billy's body odor and vomited once more. The horrible taste of beer and vomit did not help, either.

"Alright, give the kid some air." Valkyrie said, "Get your ass way downwind or I do it for you."

"I'd like to see you try." Billy challenged.

John saw Billy suddenly fly up a meter and then away. He could not see where Billy landed, but heard the razorboy cuss after he thought he heard a thump.

"Smells better now?" Valkyrie asked.

Doing his best to hold the contents of his stomach in, John breathed through his mouth and merely nodded.

"Think you can handle unloading all this with Billy's help?" Hunter asked.

"Sure." Valkyrie answered, "As long as you give that fence of yours a call."

"Already on it." Hunter returned.

John could feel himself being guided to Hunter's motorcycle.

"I'll send you your share of the loot." Valkyrie called, her voice growing softer with distance, but coming in quite clearly over their network. "And I'll make sure it's a square deal."

"Juss make shuu…" John slurred as Hunter helped him onto her motorcycle.

"She knows." she said softly, "She knows."

That was the last thing he could remember, with the next thing being in what looked like a coffin when he woke up. He was just starting to freak out completely as he could not only remember how he got in, but could not find out how to get out, when the whole wall at his head suddenly disappeared.

"Hey, hey!" Hunter told him. John could feel himself being grabbed by the armpits. Soon he was extricated from his coffin and into a world of blinding light. "Didn't think you were claustrophobic." she remarked as she helped him stand.

Everything was too bright to look at, so John clamped his eyes shut. "Huh? What?" he asked.

"Afraid of tight spaces." Hunter told him. He now noticed her voice sounded oddly loud. In fact every sound was exceptionally loud.

"Only if I don't know how I got there!" John snapped, wincing at the sound of his own voice.

"You okay?" Hunter asked.

"Will be if you don't shout." John muttered softly.

"Here." Hunter said softly, and John could feel his goggles being put into his hands. Once he had them on he darkened the lenses to a less painful level. Looking around he could see the whole wall was nothing but doors to individual coffins, with his about a meter off the floor.

"C'mon." Hunter softly said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I think I know what you need."

First thing was to collect their stuff, which John noticed was otherwise shoved into a drawer beneath the cubicle that had served as his bed for the better part of sixteen hours. Once they had their stuff it was off for something to eat. Hunter knew of a family styled restaurant that was not too far away and offered a good variety of real food.

It was not until John had downed his third glass of water, and a trip to the bathroom after the second, that Hunter gave him a brief explanation that he was experiencing a hangover. She certainly did not discourage the refills of his drink, and the cooked pineapple and mandarin oranges in the noodles tasted unusually good.

Somewhere in the middle of dinner John also noticed that Valkyrie had sent him a money transfer that had fattened his account by twenty thousand nuyen.

There was not much to the day as John found he had slept through past noon. He and Hunter relaxed for most of the day, up until about dinner time when Hunter hosted a group chat for everyone.

"So, what're we gonna do tonight?" asked Billy.

"Take a break." answered Valkyrie.

"Why for?" asked Billy.

"Billy, you're the only one I know who'd punch a bull in the face after slapping its ass." said Hunter. "We give the them time to calm down. Let them think it's all done."

"But we're not done." Billy said.

John groaned. "At least let 'em clean up. And we could always just case the joint." he said.

"We didn't make that big of a mess." Valkyrie said.

"You didn't see their break room. Cypher made a real mess of it." Hunter told them. "And what'd you do to mess up their network?" she asked.

"I… don't remember." John said a little sheepishly.

"Just how much did you have to drink?" Valkyrie asked sternly.

"Most of a six pack, I think." Hunter answered for John.

John slumped in his chair. At least only Hunter could see him.

"Anything else you wanna tell us?" Valkyrie asked.

"I think I did something in the bathrooms." John admitted, though he was having a hard time remembering.

"So maybe they'll need an hour to clean up. Big deal." groaned Billy.

"Try a day or two." Hunter amended.

"Maybe three." added Valkyrie.

"No dice. They're working today. Someone's gonna be there to receive shipments." Hunter told them.

"Why not hijack a truck?" asked Billy.

"Too late to do that today." Hunter told them. "Cypher lifted their shipping schedule last night." She paused before saying, "There's two shipments tomorrow we can hit that'll hurt them."

"Great! Let's hit 'em both!" cried Billy ecstatically.

"Yeah, good luck with that." Hunter said flatly. "We're gonna need some help getting one of 'em."

"No we don't!" Billy cried, "I can shred their tires easy!"

"And how do you expect to drive with flat tires?" asked Valkyrie. "My truck can't carry what those things do."

"Awe, they don't carry that much." Billy said.

"How about thirty two thousand meters of copper wire?" Hunter asked. "Depending on how thick the wire is, it could be pretty heavy."

"And how many spools." John added.

Billy grunted. "I could carry it." he said.

"You could carry a couple tons?" John asked, "I'd think your bones'll break. Besides, if we take the truck too we can fence that with the wire." John added.

"Oh yeah." mused Billy like it were a novel idea.

"So where do we get the help?" Valkyrie asked. "Hopefully we can get it cheap."

"How 'bout the Ghostriders?" John asked. "They're a go-gang in the area."

"Anyone else?" Billy asked.

"Well, only other ones who could help are the Godz."

"I don't think we've got a good chance with them." Hunter said.

"Why not?" asked Billy.

"Uh, how many did you slice up last week?" John asked back. "Dumbass." he muttered.

"What's wrong with the Ghostriders?" Valkyrie asked.

"They're an all girl go-gang. And they don't play well with boys." Hunter told them.

John frowned.

"Yeah, I see." Valkyrie said.

"I don't think we need help from any bitches." Billy declared.

John looked at Hunter to see what her reaction was. She looked pissed.

"Uh, can I say that I don't share his opinion." John piped in.

Hunter still looked pissed.

"Think you can manage it on your own?" Valkyrie asked.

"He's not gonna be able to answer." growled Hunter.

"Uh oh." John muttered softly.

"He's fine. Just muted him so he can't talk or type us." Hunter told them. She sounded a bit calmer now.

"Considering what all we did I really doubt we'll be able to just walk right in like we did the last time." Valkyrie said.

"I think we should scope the place out first. See what's changed." Hunter suggested.

"I think so too." John added.

There was a pause before Valkyrie asked, "What about Billy?"

"He left." Hunter told them.

"Then text him and let's case the joint." John said.

Later, John and Hunter were first to arrive, stopping at a different place this time to scope out the RMD facility. About half an hour later Valkyrie showed up.

"Where's Billy?" Hunter asked.

"Slacker didn't show up." Valkyrie said, "After the chat ended he sent me a message saying he had better things to do than watch a building."

Hunter sighed. John wondered if there would be a way to hijack part of Billy's payment to the rest of them.

Valkyrie held the door for John as he climbed into her truck. The seats would have been much more comfortable than anything else available. A few hours later he had broken his way back through their main firewall.

"They've managed to get more stuff." he told Valkyrie and Hunter through their commlinks.

"How badly did we hurt them last time?" asked Hunter.

With a wave of a virtual hand John scrolled through their production schedule. "Uh, half a day, I think." he said, and forwarded a copy to the women.

"But it looks like they didn't get anything done at all." commented Hunter. "Oh, by the way, they've beefed up security."

John received two access IDs that he had not seen the last time.

"I've seen two drones patrolling around." Hunter continued, "Think you can do anything with them?"

It took a little bit of scanning, but John was able to find them. Mentally prodding them felt like poking a red dodge ball, so he opted to brace himself and jabbed a virtual hand at the firewall. In a few seconds he was through.

The sculpting inside the node looked similar to the inside of the minidrones he used for home security. It looked like the inside of a vehicle, with the windows actually being status readouts of the drone's systems and the main forward window being the drone's visual sensors.

And as with all drones, there was an interface to where John could transpose his mind directly to the drone and control it as if it were his own body. It was called 'jumping in' or 'rigging', where a hacker or rigger would literally become their drone or vehicle.

"Easy in." John said to Hunter, "Checkin' it out now."

"Be careful if it was too easy. Might be a honey pot." Hunter warned.

"And that's why I'm checkin' it out!" John said.

Nothing appeared to be wrong. John was able to access the sensors of what was a GMC-Nissan Doberman drone, and a newer model. Older models looked like a pintsized go-cart with a machinegun turret. Good, but not great if you had to go off roading.

The new models, like this one, replaced the four wheels with a set of four legs and with a design that had managed to keep the speed of the original. With a more modular weapon mount it was also capable of mounting anything from a taser to a light machinegun, and could shoot with a fair amount of accuracy as long as it had the right software.

"I'm not so sure it's gonna be as easy a second time around." Valkyrie finally said. "I've been scoping the place out astrally as close as I dare."

"What'd you find?" Hunter asked.

"There's three eyeballs and an earth elemental patrolling around there now." Valkyrie told them.

"Eyeballs?" asked John.

"Watcher spirits. Extremely weak but really annoying." Valkyrie told him. "I think I can handle them on my own."

"Yeah, but who knows how many more mages we'll have as soon as they're gone." added Hunter.

"Billy's gonna be pissed." John said.

"He is 'bout as delicate as a drunken ork in a China shop." commented Valkyrie.

"So are we gonna go to the Ghostriders for help?" asked John.

"There's at least one magician in that gang." Hunter told them.

"I could use the backup, just in case there's more than one." Valkyrie said.

"At least their hangout ain't too far away." said Hunter.

All The World's A Stage, at least that was the name on the sign. It looked like what you might think of as a biker bar or dive. Dull gray walls, few windows, and a parking lot filled with motorcycles. Decorations included a physical sign advertising the name of the place, and a more impressive AR representation of a spinning globe on a stage floating in front of the sign. There were a few people mingling outside, and though John could feel them looking at him, no one said a thing as John walked right on in with Valkyrie and Hunter.

"Wait here." Hunter said, walking up to the bar.

John stood near the door, leaning against the wall. He kept a virtual hand in Hunter's commlink, but only to keep watch on it in case someone tried to hack into it. Valkyrie, who was not too worried about being networked, was running with her commlink with its WiFi disabled.

The inside was about as bad as any biker bar John expected to enter, with lots of noise, music, and the smell of liquor mixed with stale air and body odor. It smelled better than Billy. There were only a few AROs, and only trideo feeds from various networks from around Denver and the PCC. John also noticed that most of the patrons here were women, with most of the men wearing the colors of the Ghostriders.

After talking with the bartender, Hunter walked over to a high table and sat down on a stool. There she waited.

A few minutes later an elf and human female came over to the table. They too took stools of their own.

The elf looked like she was as tough as sun baked leather you were trying to chew. Her otherwise handsome face was marred by a vertical scar that ran down from her hairline over her cheek, passing just to the outside of her left eye. Whatever gave her that scar looked like it had also caught her neck as well. She seemed a little twitchy as she sat.

The human looked softer than the elf, and from what John had seen in people before, for the last two months he could remember, did not mean that she could be any less dangerous.

Hunter and the others talked for a little bit.

"Cypher." called Hunter, waving him over.

"Wanda, Felicity," Hunter said as John climbed onto a stool, "this is Cypher, the team hacker."

"This kid?" asked the elf, Wanda.

"Don't gimme shit about being a kid, and I won't give ya shit about being a girl." John said sternly. He pinged their commlinks with an invite to his network with the others. Thankfully they accepted.

Right away he brought up an ARO of a map of the Bow Mar area of Denver.

"There's a factory in the area we want hit. Nothing fancy or hard, but we want to make sure they don't manage any work tomorrow." Hunter said. John highlighted RMD's location.

"There's also a shipment coming in. If we time it right, we could hijack it. It'll be at the factory at about eleven fifteen." Hunter said.

"What's it shipping?" Wanda asked.

"Just a bunch of copper." Hunter answered, "Nothing special, unless you've got a need for copper."

"And we've got no use for copper, so what's in it for us?" Wanda asked.

"A cut of what we're able to fence it for." Hunter said.

"And exactly just how much is it worth?" Wanda asked, leaning in close.

"Cypher?"

"Copper's about three nuyen per kilo, and it's in spools of twelve and twenty thousand meters. Figure a couple of tons at least, each." John said, reading from his list of details. "We think they'll run about fifty thousand."

"And the truck itself should be about the same." Hunter added.

"And with the usual black market cut, we're looking at what, thirty thousand nuyen?" Wanda asked.

"Roughly that." answered Hunter.

"We want seventy-five." declared Wanda.

John's eyes went wide behind his goggles. Seventy-five thousand?

"Too much, twenty-five." Hunter countered.

Wanda shook her head. "We'll have more people on the line than your three." she said, "Seventy."

"We've got a fourth who's elsewhere." Hunter returned, "Thirty-five."

"Still, your four's a lot less to risk than us." Wanda said, "Sixty-five."

"I know first aid, triage, and the sort, and we've got a magician who can do healing. We'll help your wounded out." Hunter said.

"And I can handle matrix security." added John. "Don't know what you got in hackers, but I don't expect it's much."

"Alright, fifty." Hunter said.

"Fifty." Wanda agreed, and they shook hands.

John only shook his head. Would it not have been better just to say fifty/fifty at the start and be done with it?

"We got a place you can crash for the night." Wanda said, "Felicity, will you take care of them while I round up some muscle?"

"Sure." Felicity said.

The crash pad was far from a high class home, but it had a comfortable lived in feel that felt welcoming to John. It was also not too far from the bar, being literally on the other side of Lower Tule Lake.

After a short night's sleep that left John feeling cranky, he was slowly probing his way back into RMD's network. While the firewall might have been a little bit harder than before, sadly they did not change the encryption to their network.

It was after John had hacked into the two Doberman drones, and edited who they would accept orders from, that John had discovered a new flaw from RMD's increased security measures. While the security network had an extremely short signal range, the drones did not and they were connected to the security network.

"The Ghostriders are starting." Hunter announced over their own private network.

"Shit." cussed John.

"What is it?" asked Hunter.

"Just found a big flaw in their security. Could use a few hours to hack it." John said.

"Fuck finesse. Hammer through. It'll give the white hats more to deal with."

If John's icon could grin it would.

First he set the drones on a locked patrol, with the safeties on their guns. Then he called on his registered crack sprite, giving it a task to enhance his exploit form and he did just as Hunter suggested. In a matter of seconds he had pounded his way through the firewall.

Once inside he saw what looked like an erector set monster with a box body, four spindly metal legs, and four arms ending in different appendages. On one was something that looked like a camera, which it was using to analyze everything within the node.

Pulling his pistols, John took aim at the camera arm and started shooting. Rather than bullets, tiny rockets flew from the pistols with a fiery whoosh. The first shot rocked the mechanical monster while a second and third shot exploded harmlessly. All the while it kept scanning about.

Two electrical linemen showed up, appearing out of nowhere.

"Awe shit." John muttered to himself. Rather than confront the two new icons John opted to jump back to one of the Doberman drones, leaving a virtual hand behind.

John began trying to crash the security node itself. Forcing streamers of data through his fingers into the security node, it felt as if every bone in his hand was going to shatter. The pain was excruciating when he yanked his hand away, tearing and shattering the virtual floor of the security node. The icon of his subscription to that node disappeared from his view through the two Doberman drones.

"You okay kid?" asked Hunter.

"I guess. Crashed the node. Maybe twenty seconds till it's up again." John told her.

"We're starting to pull out." Hunter told him, "We got the loot."

Disconnecting himself from the business node, John now started paying attention to what the Doberman drones were doing.

Through their sensors, John saw a handful of black and silver racing motorcycles now zipping away with Valkyrie's truck behind them. He sent an order to the drones to follow her truck.

Valkyrie and most of the Ghostriders with Felicity went south while Hunter and Wanda went elsewhere. Thankfully Valkyrie stopped long enough to let the Doberman drones climb into the bed of her truck.

They did not go to the same crash pad as before. Instead Valkyrie led the Ghostriders south of what was Columbine, south of Chatfield Lake, to a stretch of Denver that was now abandoned housing and home to squatters. There Valkyrie and another Ghostrider tended to the few injuries they had incurred.

John busied himself with rewriting the access IDs of their motorcycles and commlinks, which took little time between each. After that he changed the access IDs of the Doberman drones, gave them a thorough scan for any RFID tags, and reprogrammed them to view him as their master.

That evening he received a money transfer of five thousand nuyen from Hunter, and a message saying it was his share of the third from their half of the fenced truck and goods they had hijacked from in front of RMD. He even managed to get on Felicity's good side somewhere along the line.

The next afternoon a message came through the disposable commlink from the pager. The message was terse and to the point. Simply put the job was done and they were to meet at Jay's Boathouse North at eight p.m. to get paid. Per Hunter's request and his setup, the commlink in John's goggles had forwarded the message to her and Billy, and he told Valkyrie.

Part of John had wished he had removed Billy from the forwarding list.

Later that evening they had gathered at Jay's Boathouse, a bar and restaurant that was not quite so swanky as the Aspen Chalet, but with real food on the menu John knew it would be a pricey place. At least a private dining room had been reserved for them by Mr. Johnson in advance, but he nor his bodyguards were there when everyone arrived.

Billy had looked like he had just left a street doc, with fresh stitches on one arm and over his bald head, and three butterfly bandages holding a gash on his cheek closed. He also moved as if he was in pain all over his body. Several questions as to what had happened to Billy had crossed John's mind, but seeing that Billy looked even more pissed off than ever he opted to keep them to himself. When John thought about it, he was surprised to notice that Billy did not smell as bad as before.

Both he and Hunter had opted for sodas while they waited, while Billy had himself a pitcher of some orange drink he called a 'Screwdriver', and Valkyrie drank what looked like was just water. Silently Hunter had told him a 'Screwdriver' was a mix of orange juice and vodka, though she suspected there was more vodka than juice in Billy's.

It was eight-twenty in the evening and Mr. Johnson still had not yet shown. Just as John was starting to feel they would not even get paid, or worse, get arrested, there was a knock to the door of their private dining room and Mr. Johnson's bodyguard walked in.

"Here." he said gruffly, tossing four credsticks onto the table.

"That's it?" Billy asked.

John wasted no time in grabbing one of the credsticks. He also saw one of the other credsticks fly itself into Valkyrie's open hand.

"Yes." the bodyguard replied as he turned away.

John slotted the credstick and found the full payment of eight thousand nuyen on it.

"And our food?" Billy asked.

"You're on your own." the bodyguard said as walked out the door.

"Well, guess that's it." Hunter said, standing to leave. John and Valkyrie did the same.

"Fuckin' cheapskate." John heard Billy mutter as they left him alone. He had a few smart remarks come to mind, but only shook his head.

"And that's why you don't order the expensive stuff unless you're sure the Johnson's gonna pay." Hunter told him as they left.


	5. Run 05 : Through A Rose Colored Display

Run 05 : Through A Rose Colored Display Link (based on the mission written by Adam Large; updated 2013/04/17)

Merlin was truly a wizard at procurement. Sometimes it amazed John at just how much stuff could "fall off the back end of a truck", especially when some of the stuff was completely digital. It had not taken much time at all for Merlin to get some fake licenses for John to say it was legal for him to have automatic weapons in his possession.

Of course, these were really mounted on the backs of two Doberman drones he had effectively stolen only the week before.

John already had ideas of what he wanted to do with the two drones, one of which was to get them armed with better guns. That was going to prove to be a challenge for Merlin as he told John that the desired weapons were illegal for regular citizens to have.

That did not mean that Merlin was not going to even try, just that it would take a few days at least. Maybe a week.

But that was not all. John had wanted to be able to avoid not being able to remotely hack a system like the RMD factory and not have to rely on someone being able to sneak up to pin a commlink in. After a fair amount of research he had opted to take parts from a micro tapper drone and install them into a Renraku Yokujin, a large dragonfly looking drone, that was equipped with a mini laser cutting torch. The same drone was also upgraded with a better sensor suite, transceiver, and a chameleon coating and software so it would know how to hide. Now as long as no one tore it apart for a physical serial number he would be just fine with the stolen drone.

John had wondered why Merlin told him the drone had been taken from a Lone Star evidence locker. All he got from the dealer's icon was a smile when he asked.

Now if only Merlin was just as good at procuring information. Tabby had gotten upset with John to the point of not even answering any of his calls anymore. He had thought of resorting to instant messages, but after thinking about it for a bit decided not to. John did not think it would be a good idea to really irritate a fixer too much.

It was only after the call had ended, heavy metal music blaring, when John was drawing up plans in AR on how he was going to modify the pair of Ares MP-LMGs that he realized some might find this an odd way of spending a day for a twelve year old boy. Truth be told he found it fun to work with such things while games and sports like tag, football, and soccer did not interest him all that much.

His train of thought changed when he barely heard the beeping of his commlink.

John turned the harsh music down and put his goggles on before he hit the receive button on his commlink. The ARO display was dominated by a bald ork's face. He had a single gold tusk along with the stereotypical squinty eyes and thin lips, and his slightly pointed ears were spread a bit wider than normal.

"Oy chummer." the ork said, "The boss needs some muscle and brains. They were busy so you'ze been tapped. A'ight?" He chuckled before continuing, "Don't keep the boss waitin', and have an appetite. I'll meet ya at Marcel's at four. Go to the kitchen entrance. Don Casquilho, well he's got a… special relationship with this place."

Looking at the display on his commlink, John saw it was just after 14.00.

"Just what's this all about?" John asked.

"A crime was pinned on one of the family, and the heat's being upped on the family." the ork told him.

"I can guess what the Don wants." John said, "I'll be there."

The ork smiled as he ended the call.

John dropped himself onto his bed, stretching out as he tried to let his mind sink into VR. Once there he started searching out all of the information he could find about Marcel's, particularly the address that the ork had forgotten to give him, but also if there were some secrets he might be able to find.

Ultimately the few important things he had found were that the place was suspected to be a laundering front for the Casquilho family, and that the mirrored walls were one-way and hid some private rooms. The food itself was supposed to be real and real good, so John guessed there would be a lot of people eating there. With some of the flashier pics of the wait staff, he also guessed there'd be a lot of gawkers as well.

Over the next hour, John checked the magazines for his Predators and made sure they were loaded and that he had two extra for each. The Warhawk was still feeling a little uncomfortable at his side, like the monster revolver was going to pull his jeans down, but John decided to put up with it anyway.

With a few last minute tune ups of his heavily modified Katana-11, John slowly and carefully pulled out of his underground apartment on electrical power before taking off into the tunnels below Denver.

It was almost 16.00 when John finally reached Marcel's, having taken the tunnels only part of the way, including the border crossing into the Sioux side of Denver. The engine of his motorcycle rumbled as he first drove past the restaurant, getting a good look at the wageslaves as they gawked at the serving staff within. Following the ork's advice, John drove around to the back of the restaurant.

He was the last one to arrive, with Valkyrie and another man in a sharp looking suit watching from the street. Hunter was further back with the ork that had called him.

"When did you get the bike?" Valkyrie asked as John pulled up.

"Few weeks ago." John answered, "But it needed work. Finished it two days ago."

"Nice." commented Hunter as she stepped up.

John could not help but rev the engine a few times, smiling big as the internal combustion engine roared its power. Then he parked his motorcycle next to Hunter's.

"Oy!" barked the ork, "Did I call you'ze?"

"Shit, and I thought Billy was dense." muttered John as he stashed his helmet under the seat. "Yes, you did!" he said loudly.

"You can relax, Miguel." Hunter told the ork as she walked up, "He may be a kid, but Cypher's a damned good hacker."

"You'z Cypher?" Miguel asked.

John parked his motorcycle next to Hunter's before looking at Miguel, or even answering. "Yeah, I'z Cypher." he answered mockingly.

"I don't like dis." Miguel said, looking at Hunter, "Not sure 'bout you'z workin' wit' a kid."

John groaned.

"I gotta agree with Miguel." the other guy said, finally saying something. "Says something about a team's professionalism when a child is employed."

The new guy's voice certainly did not sound familiar. He did not look familiar either. He was probably about a meter eighty-five, medium build, with clear skin, short cut ebony black hair that did not hide his pointed ears, and hazel eyes that shifted to brown at the pupil. He wore a rather fancy suit that made John think he belonged in a corporate business meeting instead of a restaurant's back alley. He could have passed for Tom Cruise, if Tom Cruise were eighty years younger and actually still alive.

"Hey, you can explain it to the Don why he's a man short." John said to Miguel, "Get a guy named Billy if you wanna hacker." He turned back to his motorcycle, but already he was seeking out the other guy's commlink.

"Maybe we should." suggested the new guy.

"Not on your life, pretty boy." Valkyrie growled. "You of all should know looks are deceiving, Morph. And Cypher's more professional than Billy."

"If you replace Cypher with Billy for a hacker then I walk." Hunter told them. "The only thing Billy can hack is whatever's under his spurs."

"And you know this how?" Morph asked.

"You heard about that false fire alarm that also crashed the node at Holm Elementary a few weeks back?" Hunter asked.

"The kid the one who set it off?" Morph asked, looking at John. "Not like that's hard to do."

"Actually, that was Billy." Hunter told him. "Razorboy with more blades than brain cells."

Morph scowled. "Sorry, but that isn't enough to sway me." he said, "Besides, you've probably mothered him on each and every run. I can't take your word seriously when he looks like he could be your kid brother."

A sharp remark was at the tip of John's tongue when Hunter beat him to it. "Just shut it! I don't have a brother!" she snapped.

"Hmm, could've fooled me." Morph returned in a much calmer tone. "But it doesn't change that I don't think it's a good idea working with a kid."

"Oy!" barked Marcel, "'Come on, all you'ze. Da kid, too."

That seemed to settle it, that John was coming in and nothing Morph could say was going to change it. John also wondered why Miguel suddenly changed his mind. The ork certainly did not stop him as he followed the others in through the back door.

A text message from Hunter came through his commlink. It was short, reading, "Hack Morph's link if you think you've gotta prove yourself. Valkyrie's cool with it."

He smiled as he followed the others. He did feel out for Morph's commlink amidst the tangle of signals, but that was about it for the moment.

It really was the kitchen door that they walked through, and John got a good look at the multitude of chefs in wildly patterned uniforms bustling about and pushing trays of food out another door into the restaurant.

Miguel showed them through a different door, leading through a short hallway and into a different dining room with a single table and several chairs. One of the walls was all glass, and John remembered about the one-way mirrors said to be in the restaurant. Through this John could see various waiters and waitresses, most of them more scantily dressed to show off body modifications, tattoos, and in the case of some their blessings from the comet. At least John figured one of the waitresses was a changeling, judging by the furry tail wagging from beneath an almost too short skirt.

It was when John looked back to the table that he noticed an old Latino man at the head. He wore a nice suit, though it looked rumpled like he did not quite care too much how he looked, and barely had enough graying hair left to even try to make a bad comb over. John figured he was the Don, with two other men already in the room being younger and dressed sharply in black suits. One of the men was also Latino, his hair tied in a neat and simple ponytail, standing guard at the door as John and the others filed in. The other had skin almost as black as the outside lenses of John's goggles, and his pitch black hair was clumped in dreadlocks.

"Come in, come in. Sit down." the Don said with a slight Spanish accent, waving everyone in with a half eaten breadstick in one hand. "Dinner will be here shortly."

John ended up taking a chair close to the Don and his bodyguard. For a moment he was regretting the seat as he could smell something sweet from their proximity, something he could not quite identify but knew he had smelled it from somewhere before. Beside him sat Valkyrie, and on the other side of the table was Hunter and Morph.

Hunter also did not look pleased. John wondered if it was because she was sitting next to Morph. The elf looked like he belonged at the bar hitting on single women with cheesy pickup lines than sitting here in a semi-secretive dining room.

"And you are?" the Don asked. John noticed the Don was looking at him.

"Cypher." John answered.

"I was told to expect someone young looking, but I wasn't expecting a child." the Don remarked. He did not look pleased.

John let his head fall forward, clunking on the dining table. "Would it help that I've been mistaken for a dwarf by a stumbling drunk?" he asked without looking back up.

"No." the Don answered. "I really hope you live up to my expectations."

"I'm sure he will." Hunter said. "He might still be a bit green, but he's very good."

Something heavy clunked on the table. Looking up John saw a large deep dish pizza sitting in the middle of the table along with two large boats of spicy fries. The servers also distributed drinks, and John noticed everyone but him got beer while he got a large cola instead.

Two waitresses served up slices of the pizza to everyone, starting with the Don. John barely noticed the Don taking a good handful of the spiced fries because he got a good look down the shirt of a buxom waitress as she bent over to pull a slice of pizza from the middle of the table. Their eyes briefly met, and she gave John a wink. John swallowed to get his heart out of his throat.

"I called you all here because someone was arrested." the Don said as soon as the waitresses had left, "A lieutenant of mine, Dean, for criminal hacking and murder." He pushed a screamsheet to Morph. It was digital paper, and John had little trouble drawing a copy of its contents into a personal ARO for himself to read while he ate his first slice of pizza.

The Don waited while the others skimmed the screamsheet.

There was a picture of Dean along with a list of previous charges, both convicted and cleared. It was some of the current charges that got John to wondering. Right away he opened a new ARO and started looking up LuCom, the company that Dean was accused of hacking into. Some of the extra information he found about the company's recent events confused John greatly.

"Thought you'd just be able to bust Dean out." remarked John, "Why bother with us?"

"It's not that simple, kid." Morph said.

"He's right." the Don added, "It's not that simple. I know Dean. He's like a grandson to me, and there's no way at all he could have murdered his girlfriend."

"Alice?" Hunter asked.

The Don nodded.

Looking back at the screamsheet's ARO, John saw a charge of second degree murder of Alice Jensen at the top of the list of charges against Dean.

"So you want us to clear Dean of the charges." John reasoned. He returned part of his attention to the ARO. The details did not sit right with him as he read about how the criminals brutally murdered Alice and another security guard, then busted in and trashed the LuCom office building that left a conference call line untouched, and all under fifteen minutes and still this was still a criminal hacking? Were axes involved in this?

"Bright boy." remarked the Don. "Yes. And of course I'll pay you for your services and discretion. Two thousand now and another nine thousand after you've cleared Dean's record of this heinous crime."

Behind his goggles John's eyes brightened. Eleven thousand nuyen would cover what he expected the Ares MP-LMGs to cost him, along with the software for the Doberman drones to use them effectively and the extra modifications he planned on doing to the machine guns.

"Sure, I'm in." Hunter said first.

"Me too. I'd love to know how these idiots think trashing an office is criminal hacking." John added.

"Maybe they used an ax?" Morph asked. "Count me in."

John wondered if Morph could read minds.

"Me too." added Valkyrie.

The Don smiled. "I have a few things to help you." he told them, waving his hand. The bodyguard next to him pulled out a chip a key on a ring, handing both to Morph.

"The chip has a fake SIN on it, and a note telling you where Dean is being held." the Don said, "One of you can use it to talk to Dean as his attorney. The other is the key to his apartment, in case there is anything there to help you clear his name."

John listened in silence while the others ate and discussed how to approach this. During this he opted to search the matrix for info on Dean and Alice. Somewhere in the middle of this John heard the Don say something about the Triads being involved in this. Something to do with territory or business, which was something John figured was a stupid reason.

Ultimately it was decided that Morph and Valkyrie would visit Dean while Hunter and John checked out Dean's apartment.

John and Hunter took the surface streets to Dean's apartment. This meant taking the East Brighton Boulevard border crossing into the CAS sector. Not too far from the border to the Hub they had to leave their motorcycles at a parking garage. Traffic within the Hub itself was a nightmare of a nightmare, Hunter told him, and walking would be a lot faster. When John saw a really nice looking Hyundai Shin-Hyung, bright yellow with black racing stripes, getting torn apart piece by piece by a group of border agents he was glad. He had not even had his own motorcycle working for a week yet, and he really hated the thought of it getting torn apart at a border checkpoint. This grew when Hunter told him that the border guards were not required to put any vehicle back together again.

The Hub, or "The Dragon's Playground" as it was called by some, was a veritable city-within-a-city. Entertainment, big business, high class restaurants, and more could be found within the few square kilometers that was officially the Hub. Between the bars and fine dining, diplomatic embassies, and corporate enclaves, John thought it was a wonder that anyone actually had a residence in this part of the FRFZ. It was also no wonder that the dragon Ghostwalker claimed his lair here.

Personally John did not like the thought of living so close to another who could be very high up in the megacorp food chain. You know, the kind of super huge corporation that told national governments what and what not to do. Then there was the fact that John had to have his commlink in public mode, which he hated. Private mode had a nice batch of automatic screening features that kept the spam out. More than once he was tempted to revenge hack a Nike spambot that kept bugging him about a new line of boys' footwear. He felt his generic, and substantially cheaper, knockoff sneakers were perfectly fine.

Dean's apartment was in a high-rise condominium that took up a whole city block. The condo stretched between 14th and 15th Streets, and between Curtis and Arapahoe Streets.

The key the Don had given them let them walk right on through the front door like they lived there. No buttons had to be pressed for the elevator as it opened for them automatically and whisked them away to the correct floor.

There was a stuffy, clean kind of smell to the hallway as they walked to the door of Dean's apartment. Behind his goggles John was feeling rather nervous as Hunter tried the key.

The door opened for them without any protest.

"Wow! This place is way cooler than mine." remarked John as he got a look at Dean's apartment. And that was just not what he saw but was also what he felt through the WiFi that flooded place.

The high-rise apartment looked like a rich playboy's pad. It was really clean, lacking the über-geek toys and magazines that John expected to see. Admittedly John had collected several hardcopy techie magazines of his own, and his own little closet of a home was anything but clean. The furniture itself was mostly beige or white, with real looking wood a contrasting warm brown for legs and other accents.

What had really interested John was that just about everything in the apartment had an RFID tag to it. The living room alone was thick with a web of signals between countless tags and the central home node.

"Keep an eye out." Hunter said, "I'm gonna look around."

John pulled his yokujin drone, named 'Laserbeak', out of his pocket. With a gentle mental prod it sputtered to life. With a thought he sent it a command to hide itself outside and just above the front door with all of its sensors on a passive alert for anyone approaching. With a nearly silent zip of its four directional turbofans it whizzed out the door.

Keeping an open connection to Laserbeak, John tapped its sensors and kept their AROs in his field of view. It was quite an odd sensation hearing what was going on outside the apartment while he was inside, especially after the door was closed.

With the drone on over watch, John went to a little bit of exploring on his own. There were a few interesting looking glasses on the coffee table, each sitting on a coaster instead of the clear glass surface. John picked one up, feeling a tag on its bottom moving with it and a thread of data to the coaster where it sat. Setting the glass on the coffee table itself proved to be pointless as the coaster scooted itself under the glass just as John was about to set it on the table.

A weird gurgling nose suddenly came from the kitchen.

"Did you touch anything?" asked Hunter from deep within the apartment.

"No!" John called back, walking carefully to the kitchen.

The noise came from a coffee pot as it started churning hot water through it. There was a decanter ready for what was supposed to be coffee, but instead only clear water was pouring in. There was also a squirrel sleazing around the coffee pot. It took just a second for John to realize that it was not a real squirrel, but an agent program.

It also seemed quite out of place, so John gestured with a virtual hand and snagged it in a spider web like net of data. Right away he started tracing the squirrel's data trail. The seconds seemed to take forever to pass as the trace snaked its way halfway across Denver. It was only about five seconds before John found it originated from somewhere off of Happy Canyon Road.

Moments later the squirrel disappeared.

"Well, the place looks clean." Hunter said. John's heart sputtered into his throat, he did not know she had walked up behind him.

"Something up?" she asked.

"Just tracing some squirrel agent program that was in here." he said.

Hunter looked around. "I don't see anything." she said.

"It already left."

"Uh huh. Okay. Well, anyway, it's time to go."

"Nothing to help us?" he asked.

"Well, nothing that'll incriminate Dean." Hunter answered.

"So, where're we off to?" John asked as they walked out the front door. With a silent command John called the yokujin drone to his hand.

"LuCom." Hunter told him.

It was about an hour later when they reached LuCom. The business itself was just a few blocks north of Porter Memorial Hospital. Next to LuCom was a two story parking garage, and across the street was coffeehouse and a small time electronics store.

In front of the LuCom building itself was only a scrolling ARO police tape and a paper sign on the front door saying "No Visitors Today". High above was a floating police blimp drone. These were the only clues that anything out of the ordinary had even happened.

"You'd never know a bloody murder happened here." remarked Valkyrie.

Hunter shook her head. "The corps never waste time getting back to business as usual." she said.

"So, what'd you manage to learn?" Morph asked as John and Hunter pulled into an empty parking space in the lot next to the electronics store.

"Dean's place makes him out like an upper class nerd." Hunter told them.

"It's nice and clean, but everything's run through the CHN." John added, "Way nicer than my place."

"Anything linking Dean to this?" Morph asked.

"Nothing." Hunter answered.

"No software, no gear, not a thing." John added.

"I doubt Knight Errant was even there." Hunter added.

"The only thing there before us was an agent program that had hacked its way in. Traced it to somewhere near Happy Canyon Road." John said.

"Now what about Dean?" Hunter asked.

"He's on the level." Morph said, "Can't tell the Knight the truth, else he'd be in a lot longer. All Knight's got on this is circumstantial evidence."

"What kind?" Hunter asked.

Morph waved a hand and brought up a data file. John snagged himself a copy to read.

"And about Alice?" John asked as he started skimming the data file.

"He was honest with her, too. Told her the truth about being in the mob, being a hacker, and she still stuck with 'im. Dean's a playboy, but gave it up for Alice." Morph told them.

"Explains the His & Hers bathroom." commented Hunter.

"Well, there's still the 'links Knight Errant says Dean stole." John said, having found it in the report Morph had gotten. "And Knight says his commlink's ID was at the murder scene."

"That's piss poor evidence right there." said Hunter, "But if that's all there is for evidence then Knight Errant's going to be sure to drown him in it."

"And Dean didn't have either commlink and has no idea why anyone would take them." Morph added. "You're supposed to be the techie nerd here, Cypher, any ideas?"

John pondered the thought for a moment as he flipped Morph his middle finger. "Nothing but dumbass stuff." he said, "'Bout the only reason I'd steal someone's commlink was if it was way better than mine. But that's also lots of hours cleaning it up, makin' sure the SIN's burned away, and stuff. Prob'ly a lot more trouble than it's worth." The thought that someone off the street would have a better commlink than what was built into his goggles almost made him laugh.

"What about for hacking?" Morph asked. "You can copy programs and use them, right?"

"Best only if you're gonna mook." John answered, "It's hard to use more than one 'link at a time. Even then, agents ain't that smart, and their IDs have to be hacked too so they're not all the same. Nodes don't let the same ID on more than once, so you can't pull an Agent Smith on it. But still that's hours of work… Each."

"But the hack job was done before the commlinks were taken, right?" Valkyrie asked.

"We don't know for sure." Hunter said. "But something big must've happened here, this place's really dead."

"Whadaya mean? So there's supposed to be a lot of AR spam around?" John asked.

"Not really spam," Hunter answered, "but sales bots and advertisements. 'Bout as bad as the Hub."

John shivered.

"But we're being watched." Morph told them.

"I see him." added Hunter.

"I think I'll get some coffee." Morph told them.

"You two look around." Hunter said softly to Morph and Valkyrie. "We'll just wait here and see what happens."

John, not having bothered to look, kept his gaze towards the LuCom building. Though he kept his perceptions in the real world, mentally he was analyzing the current status of the LuCom building node. The more carefully he examined it, the more and more holes he found in the firewall. Where normal firewalls felt like bubbles to John, with the more secure ones being rock hard, this one was like Swiss cheese. Well, maybe not holes like Swiss cheese holes, but holes large enough to fly a GMC Banshee through at full throttle and still have room to spare for the semi truck sized LAV.

Several user icons were moving back and forth, working in the software environment to slowly rebuild the node. Even interoffice traffic was not as secured as John expected it to be, and more than once he caught wireless communication traffic from one person or another. It was largely in pieces, but after about a minute John was able to piece together enough to know the biggest security concerns were over some prototype hardware schematics. One composite note in particular suggested that these schematics were untouched during the hack. This confused John, as being a hacker this kind of paydata would have been almost too tempting to pass up. Since it was not part of the job to rob LuCom, he actually did pass on the paydata. This time.

"You finding anything?" Hunter asked.

"I can't even call this a hack job." he answered. "The node's in pieces and there's paydata that wasn't touched."

"Cool it, fuzz." Hunter harshly whispered to him.

"You seem quite interested in LuCom." the man said as he walked up to them. Was this the person Morph said was watching them?

"Just never been to this part of town before." Hunter told him.

"Really?" the man asked. "Detective Jack Diamond." he said, introducing himself but not flashing any sort of ID. "Kinda odd timing then, with the hacking and double murder just last night."

John made a noise that sounded like a leaky pipe under pressure. And why did Jack's name sound familiar.

"You disagree?" Jack asked him.

John noticed Hunter's glaring look at him. He ignored her.

"It's too messy." John said.

"Life in the shadows ain't always like the trids, kid." Jack countered.

"So you know we're investigating this?" Hunter asked. This confirmed to John that Jack had pegged them both as shadowrunners. Then it also hit him where the name was familiar. He was mentioned in the screamsheet as the investigator in the case against Dean.

"It was a guess." Jack told them. "But I'm still interested in what you think."

This time John looked at Jack. The detective looked like what John might think passed for attractive, though men were not quite his thing. Short cut hair, a dark complexion with green eyes, and off the rack clothing helped make him look rather unassuming. John could feel the commlink in his pocket, and he was already mentally poking it. At least this firewall felt like a solid bubble. All that mattered now was how hard it was.

Jack was also focusing his attention on Hunter, and probably expecting her to do most of the talking. John figured that was going to be one of several mistakes Jack was going to make this afternoon.

"Well, the whole thing's too messy." John said. "Not just LuCom's node is in shambles, but the whole block's fucked up." In his mental prodding of Jack's commlink, he found a chink in the firewall and started working on it.

"Hackers can be pretty good at messing things up." Jack said.

Again John made a noise that sounded like a leaky pipe. "Yeah, right. And if hackers did this then I'm an ork." Now he also had access to Jack's commlink, so John started poking around a bit. The ARO in his field of view looked like a window into an office that looked well used but was still rather neat and tidy.

"Why don't you let the grownups talk, kid." Jack told him, now looking at John.

"Why not let the grownups talk." John repeated mockingly. "Then why don't you stop looking at her tits and tell me why, mister grownup, if hackers did this why are so many nodes crashed," he paused as he found crime scene photos on Jack's commlink, "the place fucked up like a bar fight," pausing again as a message alert came to Jack's commlink about data taken from LuCom, "and the biggest paydata prize is untouched while cheap crap's out on the black market. If it really were hackers then they're worse than rank amateurs."

"How do you figure that?" Jack asked.

Behind his goggles John rolled his eyes. "You think one man could've stabbed his girlfriend and another man, and trashed the ground floor of an office in under fifteen minutes? The guy you got ain't an amateur, yet all you got on him is the ID of his commlink here at the time? Shit, and you say I'm dumb."

"Well then, if you're so smart kiddo, what's your answer?" challenged Jack.

John took a few seconds to think. "It's a frame job." John answered. Then he started editing away the traces that John had been inside Jack's commlink before logging off.

"Seriously?" Jack asked, "I'm sure you think Dean's a neat guy and all…"

"And we honestly don't know him beyond reputation." interjected Hunter.

"…but it's going to take more than just your word to clear him." continued Jack, "Besides, the man's already got a rap sheet longer than you're tall."

"And he ain't a murderer, either." John returned. "Alice was stabbed how many times?" he asked, "And how badly was she beat up? Have you even talked to Dean yourself?"

"Okay! Okay!" butted in Hunter, "I think the detective gets the point."

"What would you know about it?" Jack asked calmly. John could see he was eyeing him very carefully.

"Read the reports and saw the pics on your commlink." John answered. "Just like a mega to clean up the place right after a bloody murder, right?"

"You what?" asked Jack.

"Oh god." sighed Hunter.

"I hacked your 'link." John said. He knew he was confessing to a major crime, but what was Jack going to do about it? All of the evidence was gone.

Jack pulled his commlink out of his pocket. He fiddled with it, frowning as he looked at it, then he looked at John.

"I ain't no amateur, either." John said, smiling.

"Just don't do it again, okay?" Jack told him. He pocketed his commlink.

"Hold on." Hunter said as Jack turned to leave. "You're just letting us go?"

Jack stopped, but did not turn around. Over his shoulder he said, "Arresting you two might bring the crime rate down, but your unorthodox methods just might crack this case." With that he left.

"You sure that was a good idea?" Hunter asked, "Talking to him like that? And hacking his commlink?!"

"Just showing how stupid he is." John told her.

"And what if he wasn't such an idiot?" Hunter asked.

"Then he'd be smarter than the Knight." John answered.

"Who was that?" Morph asked as he walked back. He had a drink carrier in his left hand, loaded with four large drinks.

"Knight Errant detective." Hunter answered.

"How'd you know?" Morph asked, handing one of the drinks to Hunter.

"He said he was a detective." Hunter told them, taking the offered drink, "And Cypher hacked his 'link while talking to him."

"You what?" Morph asked, his voice carrying that disappointed parent kind of tone.

"Hacked his link while playing twenty questions at the same time." John said with a smirk. He took a drink of his own from Morph's carrier.

"Guess they're up to their usual standards, then." Morph remarked, though he was frowning at John still. "Found a body in the trash, and this." He held up a commlink. "It's crashed."

"A spirit of mine found one too." Valkyrie added as she walked up, setting down a drink carrier and pulling out a commlink of her own. "It's crashed too."

"And the victims?" Hunter asked.

"Mine looked like a street bum." Valkyrie said.

"Wageslave here." Morph said.

"Better dressed than you, eh Morph?" John asked as he took the commlinks from them. First he tried booting one of them up.

"You sure they had trodes?" Hunter asked.

When the commlink failed to reboot, John popped the case to it, looking over the electronics board within.

"Well, the guy had a smiley face painted on his head. It looked a little odd." Valkyrie told them.

"Probably nanotrodes." John said, closing the case to the commlink. He then took the second commlink and did the same. "The systems're fragged. It'll take me hours to get one of them going."

"Should we waste the time?" Morph asked.

"Someone trashed the LuCom node." Hunter told them, "And I'd bet that those'll give us some clues."

"Then you do it." John told her. "I'd rather go to where that agent went off to."

"What agent?" asked Morph.

Hunter sighed. "Cypher says he saw a virtual squirrel in Dean's apartment." she told them.

"And you let it get away?" asked Morph.

"It's not like they make squirrel net programs to catch agents!" John returned. "Besides, I traced it to the Happy Canyon Mall. Whatever hardware was runnin' it it's there."

"Hey, that reminded me." Morph said as he a hand through the air. John soon saw a data feed coming his way, so he snagged it. It was a commlink's access ID.

"Dean said it's Alice's personal ID." Morph told him. "Thought we could use it to track down where her commlink is."

"If it's on and not edited." John somberly added. Anyway, he did shift the ID to try and track it down. He chuckled when he got the commlink's location.

"Well?" asked Hunter.

John looked over everyone else. Valkyrie was patiently waiting. Morph was looking overly anxious for something way more exciting to do and kept eyeing Hunter. Hunter had a scowl on her face, her arms crossed like an angry mother.

"Her link's at Happy Canyon." John told them.

"Yeah, right." Hunter said gruffly.

Mentally John threw the same ID file Morph had sent him to Hunter. "Trace it yourself if you don't believe me." he said, "I know you got the wharez for it."

The way Hunter's eyes darted back and forth told John she was doing something through her implanted commlink. Even the WiFi activity spiked as she did this, with data packets zipping past John like the tiny flares from sparklers.

"He's right." she finally said.

About an hour later they were at Happy Canyon Mall. Or so said the address.

What it looked like to John was that they had somehow stepped out of Denver and right into China. At least there was a fair number of AROs floating over Chinese written signs to translate them into English.

The complex itself was like a giant horseshoe of buildings. In the middle, and standing by itself, was a nine story pagoda styled temple where it looked like some kind of party was going on. The stores surrounding the temple were closed, but the restaurants were open. Actually, on a second look the restaurants were open to cater for the party.

"Okay smart guy, where's the commlink?" asked Morph.

"This way." John said, feeling the signal at its strongest from a store called "Red Wire".

"I think we should take this from 'round back." suggested Valkyrie. "Don't think the guys over there'd appreciate us makin' a lot of ruckus getting in."

"Store's closed, but there's someone inside." remarked Hunter as they walked around to the back of the store.

"What was going over there anyway?" asked John.

"Some triad ceremony, I think." Morph told them.

"Should just leave them be." added Hunter.

Morph made short work of the lock on the back door. When he and Hunter were sure no one was looking they all snuck in. John pointed them upstairs, towards what he hoped was Alice's commlink.

Another locked door was in their way, and Morph got it opened for them.

Inside was the last thing John ever expected to see. A man sat slumped over a desk with a good sized blood stain covering the back of his suit. Another man sat slumped in a chair, blood having poured out of the side of his neck and the other side of his skull having been blown out. A pistol could be seen on a table, not too far from his hand.

An active commlink was also on the table, right next to the office's computer.

"This it?" Morph asked, picking up the commlink.

"Yeah, that's it." John said as he took the commlink.

"Is it Alice's?" Hunter asked.

Fortunately the interface was still unlocked. It was not difficult to access the commlink's specs to see what its access ID was. "Yeah, it's hers alright." he told them.

"Then let's get out of here." Morph said.

John heard the door slam shut. Turning to look he saw Morph furiously trying to force the door open.

"Shit!" cussed Hunter, and John felt himself getting yanked aside. He barely saw what looked like a miniature tornado form inside the room.

"Begone!" yelled Valkyrie. With both hands outstretched, John thought he saw the air waver like he was looking through a mirage. Whatever came from the fomori's hands impacted the tornado hard, causing it to unravel itself violently. Valkyrie dropped to one knee, holding her head with one hand and steadying herself with the other on the desk.

Though he never seemed to notice it, John felt like a cloud had suddenly been lifted from his mind. "What the hell was that?" he asked.

"Air spirit." Valkyrie grunted as she stood back up.

"Got the door open!" Morph called out to them.

With Alice's commlink in hand, John turned its WiFi off and pocketed it. He thought they were home free as they all ducked out the door.

And right into the gun sights of six Chinese guards and an angry looking troll with a single gleaming horn jutting from the right side of his forehead, standing a full meter taller than John and wearing a beige coat with strange symbols on it. The troll also looked familiar to John, though he could not quite figure out why.

The guards themselves wore black lined coats and held Ceska Black Scorpions in both hands, leveled at John and the others.

Slowly John raised his hands but started feeling out for whatever WiFi signals he could find. Glancing at the others he saw them also raising their hands.

The troll said something that John could only guess was spoken in Chinese.

Morph replied, also speaking in Chinese.

"Uh, what're they saying?" John asked softly. He had also given up on finding any useful WiFi signals as he could not detect their guns. Seven new commlinks would not be worth the headache to hack in the middle of a gunfight.

"The troll's demanding to know what we're doing here." Hunter replied, speaking just as softly. "Morph's telling him we're following up a murder investigation."

Two of the Chinese guards lifted their machine pistols up, and mimicking some kind of police infiltration squad hurried past John and the others to go inside the store.

Morph and the troll continued to talk, though John kept his mouth shut about asking for a translation of what they were saying. As long as they weren't shooting at him, it was all good.

The two guards were soon outside again, one of them carrying a pistol in his off hand. He said something quickly in Chinese.

"He's saying there's two shots missing from its mag." Hunter said.

The troll spoke again, and Morph quickly replied. John now wished he knew what they were saying without having to rely on Hunter to tell him.

"You all found our people like this?" the troll asked. It took a second for John to realize that he was speaking English without any kind of accent.

"Just as your men found them." Hunter answered.

"And you?" the troll asked, looking at Valkyrie. "What spells did you cast on them?"

"None." Valkyrie bit back.

"And you?" the troll asked, glaring at John.

"Hey, I'm twelve. What could I do to 'em?" John asked back rather snippily.

The troll sneered at him, and John now regretted how he answered.

"An Peng, I swear that our investigation has nothing to do with the two people that're dead inside." Morph said.

"We were on our way out when your spirit stopped us." Valkyrie added.

"Maybe one guy…" John started to say, but stopped when Hunter clamped her cybernetic arm around him with her hand over his mouth. He was about to suggest some kind of depressed homosexual angle on the guy who had shot himself in the head. It was after he saw the anger burning in An's eyes that he realized it would have been better if he had not even started to talk at all.

"Your investigation is concluded?" An asked, looking everyone over.

"It is here." Morph answered.

With Hunter's hand still firmly on his mouth, John nodded enthusiastically.

An barked something in Chinese, and the others holstered their guns. Without saying anything they left.

"We should get out of here while we can." Hunter told them. "Try and figure out where to go next."

"What about Alice's commlink?" Morph asked as they walked back to their vehicles, "Isn't there an agent or something we can trace?"

John shook his head. "I killed its signal after the spirit thingy attacked." he told them.

"Think you could find something if you hacked it?" Morph asked.

Again John shook his head.

"What about fixing up those commlinks?" Hunter asked. "Maybe there's something on them someone doesn't want us finding, and fragged them."

"I'll need a few hours." John said. They had reached their vehicles now and John climbed onto his motorcycle right away.

"I know a place where you can work." Morph said.

A few hours later, at a safehouse in an abandoned stretch of neighborhood deep in the CAS sector, John had one of the found commlinks plugged into his goggles. It felt clumsy and slow as he worked with the coded software tools to get the damaged commlink working without wiping its memory clean. A few other electronics tools lay strewn about a desk he had been given to work on.

Alice's commlink, now back online with it set to hidden mode was strapped to his left arm.

"Any luck?" came Morph's voice as he entered.

John sighed loudly. "It's only been two hours." he said sourly, "All I've managed to do is get the OS working on one of them."

"That's all?" Morph asked.

John shoved the commlinks and tools across the table. "If you're in such a hurry you can do the rest yourself!" he cried. He bit back an added remark that it would take Morph to the end of time to actually do it.

"Okay! Okay!" Morph said, raising his hands. "Was just wondering how much longer it might take."

John took a peek at the programs that had been previously installed in the commlink. He closed his eyes when he saw their conditions. "A few more hours." he said.

"Should we call a professional to help?" Morph asked.

His goggles concealed an evil glare. John felt like he had been truly insulted. "Ever see a big crystal chandelier shatter?" he countered, looking up at Morph now.

"Plenty in the trids." Morph replied.

"Ever think how long it'd take to put one back together?"

"That bad?" Morph asked.

"If I was lucky." John replied.

"I see." Morph said more softly, and left John to his work.

John created an ARO to float on the far side of the table so the others could use it to get in touch with him, stringing it to the commlink in his goggles to alert him when someone touched it. When it was set he submerged himself into virtual reality and logged into the commlink.

Bits of code flitted around John's icon like snowflakes in a black walled virtual void. With a wave of a virtual hand the bits of code stopped flitting about and froze in place, turning to align themselves in a particular fashion. With that set, John began the task of recompiling the software that had once been installed on the commlink, one bit of code at a time as quickly as possible.

An hour and a half later John was walking out to rejoin the others.

"Done already?" asked Morph.

"Could go back and play some games for an hour or two if you like." snipped John as he passed the commlink to Hunter. "Take a look." he said, bringing up public ARO data files for everyone. He felt like he could really use a liter jug of buzz cola right about now.

"So for those of us who don't understand matrix code, what's the scoop?" Morph asked.

John said, "Both 'links are hot simmed. The one I got working had a BTL on it, and the event log I recovered said it was running when the 'link was fucked over.

"The BTL is a full sim environment." he continued, "But it's way super, hyper advanced shit."

"How advanced?" Valkyrie asked.

"Way advanced." Hunter answered.

"I've seen BTL code. Downloaded some and dissected it for something to do one night." John told them. "They're all like taking a shotgun to the brain, the BTL just hits everything." Indeed, the virtual diagram John had seen had a three dimensional representation of a metahuman brain being peppered with red streaks from a crown that represented a typical trode headband.

"And this?" Morph asked.

"Think acupuncture to key points in the brain." Hunter answered. John was glad she did, as he was having a hard time trying to figure out a way to describe it.

"Acupuncture?" Valkyrie asked.

"Think pins and needles poked in your body at very precise spots." Morph said.

"I know what acupuncture is." Valkyrie returned. "Just never heard of it being used on the brain."

"This kind of stuff's nowhere near the public stuff. It's like military grade psychotropic." Hunter told them. "Haven't seen anything like this since…" Her voice trailed off, not saying whatever it was she was thinking.

"Yeah." John added, nodding.

"And that means?" Morph asked.

"Mind control?" John asked.

"Looks like a very carefully manipulated kind of mind control." Hunter added. She had a thoughtful look on her face as she scrolled through the data. "With this kind of subtlety it'd be possible to run this BTL on someone and they wouldn't even know they're being manipulated. It's nothing like those environmental better than lifes."

John walked over to the window to look out into the city at night. Something felt… odd.

"You mean you could have this running on your brain, think everything's hunky dory, and all the while someone's poking you in the direction they want?" Morph asked.

"That's about it." Hunter answered lightly.

"Something up?" Valkyrie asked.

"Huh? Oh. Just feelin' like there's some place I gotta go." John said softly. It was not something he could explain, really. This place just felt… wrong.

"You still got Alice's commlink on you?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John answered.

"And you've still got it subscribed?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you think you should cut the link?" asked Hunter.

"Wouldn't be a bad idea." added Morph. "About as much as I know about BTLs is they can really fuck your brain up."

"Naw, I'm okay." John told them. "'Sides, people are getting fucked up in this. Wouldn't it be a good idea to get inside info?"

"I don't know." Hunter said hesitantly.

"Feelin' like you gotta go someplace?" asked Valkyrie.

"Kinda." John answered.

"And suppose you had that 'link plugged right into your trodes?" asked Hunter.

With a thought an ARO came into existence. "Guess I'd be like some zombie walking the street already. I got it rigged so it can't access my trodes, even if it was hacked." John said. Truth of the matter was that the trodes in the band of his goggles were completely disabled and really only for show.

"Now I'm wondering if whoever's behind this might be there." Morph said offhandedly. "Certainly would be worth checking into."

Silently Hunter relented.

John gave directions as they traveled the streets late into the night. At his insistence everyone had their commlinks, and everything else that was wireless, in hidden mode. Along the way Hunter said she managed to get herself tied into the same program, claiming it was to help keep a watch on John. He hated the thought of someone peeping over his shoulder to watch every little thing he did, but kept quiet.

Their final destination was at the intersection of Stout and 26th Street in the CAS sector and just north east of the Hub, with Coors Field a kilometer west as the crow flies.

Sitting in front of a two story building was an augmented reality object, glowing brightly like a star come to earth. The building itself belonged to the Karakuchi Corporation. A quick search in the matrix told John the company was a subsidiary of Renraku and that their main work was on Renraku's commlink operating system.

With a sudden spark of curiosity about LuCom, John started digging through the matrix. It took a little longer, but found that LuCom was a spinoff company from MCT that worked largely on the firmware for commlinks and communications equipment.

"You sure this is the place?" Morph asked, looking around.

"Well, that sun up there in AR is tied through that program." Hunter told them.

"Seems kinda quiet." remarked Valkyrie.

John looked about, and it certainly seemed so. A nearby coffeehouse had a lot of people at outside tables relaxing with drinks and such. Along the streets were about a dozen cars that had a person or two in them, all relaxing and doing something to whittle away the time.

"But why'd someone wanna trash companies that make commlinks?" John asked aloud.

"No time to wonder. We've got company." Morph told them, pointing to one street where about a dozen people were walking. Most were dressed like gangers.

"What the hell?" John asked aloud as he looked the gangers over. He recognized most of the gang markings on this new group of people. "Godz, Fronts, Dambusters, Zombies, Ghostriders. No fucking way they'd all just hang out together like this."

"Once again we are called to defeat the corrupt, and once again we shall be victorious." called out a well dressed blonde woman at the front of the group.

"What's that all about?" asked Morph.

"Not good." Hunter answered, "No respectable ganger's gonna take orders from a suit."

The lead woman was indeed dressed nicely in a maroon pants suit, and carrying a silver walking stick at the same time. At least, this is what John thought she looked like as he tried to see through an augmented reality overly of silver chainmail and a gleaming sword in the hand that held the walking stick. There was something more about her icon that seemed strange, like there was something hiding within it.

The WiFi was suddenly feeling very thick, like John was trying to think in maple syrup. But that was not the worst of it as just about every commlink in the area came alive with an agent program reaching out to attack any other node in the area.

Looking up to try and see the AR sun, John now saw a copy of the woman on the ground. The only difference was that she had a pair of angelic like wings spread wide to try and make it look like she was flying. Right away John tried analyzing this flying woman because there was no way there would be a real person floating up in the sky like that. That, and he could kind of see through her. At least he thought he could see through her. John first thought it was an agent program, but there was something odd, wrong about it.

"Looks like they want to tear down Karakuchi." Frostbite said.

"Four on twelve ain't good odds." Morph added.

John winced as a few nodes screamed their protests as they crashed, but still he tried to figure out the flying woman. The bits and pieces of her code was not making any sense at all. Then it hit him why.

"Cypher, what the hell's up with you?" asked Hunter.

Looking back down, John saw Hunter changing the magazines of her two handguns. Then he looked at himself, about where Hunter was looking at him. "Awe shit." he cussed when he saw a demon skin overlay, red and scaly. Then he could feel more active commlinks heading their way.

"Shit!" John cussed again more loudly when he saw several of the coffeehouse patrons now heading their way, and they did not look to happy.

"Valkyrie, we'll try to help the guard. Morph, stick with Cypher and keep him safe." barked Hunter. She and the fomori were then running towards Karakuchi's front doors where a lone security guard was now trying to fend off several gangers.

At least the guard was not alone for very long. Materializing out of thin air came a Viking warrior, standing about two meters tall, armed with a large iron club and even larger circular shield, and complete with the stereotypical horned helmet.

"Why the hell do I have to babysit?" cried Morph.

"'Cause she said so." John answered, pulling his two Predator IV's out. Through the smartlink connection the pistols chambered the stick-n-shock ammo from one of their two magazines. Without hesitation he fired at the two closest people, smiling when he saw them drop.

Just as John was about to shoot at another of the coffeehouse patrons the smartlink went out on his Predator. He was still able to shoot, and the patron stumbled as the taser bullet hit him in the leg, but did not go down.

"Fuck!" John yelled, "Keep these jack-offs off me!" he told Morph as he threaded a new complex form. His head ached something fierce as his spur of the moment reality filter attempted to overwrite the demon skin overlay with his own persona icon. It felt as if someone had poured molten solder onto his brain, but he could feel himself fighting off the alien program.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" he heard Morph yell at him. Chancing a look he could see Morph performing what looked like some kind of martial arts moves as people attacked him, but he was mostly evading everyone around him. He too was also now wearing a similar demon skin.

Looking back at himself, John could still see a bit of the demon skin, but his own persona was showing through. This seemed to confuse the coffeehouse patrons, should they attack what might be a demon or some science fiction warrior in a robe and power armor.

The patrons might have been confused, but something else was not. From their commlinks came agent programs that looked like they might have once been cute bears. Well, now they looked like possessed demon bears, with glowing red eyes and chrome steel claws.

With a virtual gun in hand, John shot at one of the bears. One hit and it fell apart like a bunch of glowing glass cubes that then melted away like snow.

Three more bears pounced on him, their claws burning as the disruptive code of their attack program tried to work its way through John's armor.

"Shit!" John cussed gritted teeth as he brought down another bear program. "Can't go fast enough! Make sure to cover my ass!"

With that he threw his consciousness into virtual reality.

Everything was different in VR. There were no people from the coffeehouse or the gangers. There were only dozens of agent programs attacking various nodes, not to mention the bear programs with their shining claws trying to tear John apart.

Left and right John shot at one agent or another, each one shattering into tiny glass cubes that melted away like snow.

"Go for the general!" John heard Hunter's voice call out through VR. At another spot he could see her icon as she desperately tried to fight agent programs in AR and people in reality at the same time. Instead of orange, the armor of her futuristic looking icon was purple, and the arm cannon proved to be a real cannon as she shot blazing yellow fireballs at the agent programs.

Well, that was what her icon looked like when it did not look like some red skinned demon because of the alien program coming from who knew where.

For a moment John wondered how he was supposed to know who the general was. After blasting yet another bear program to the digital void John just opted to go for one of the most outlandish looking icon he could see he knew did not belong to anyone he knew.

Pulling on the resonance itself, John augmented his attack form. In an instant his two pistols were combined into a single monster sized cannon looked like it would have been impractical if it existed in the real world, and took both hands to hold. Not only had he made his attack form a lot more powerful, but he had added a few extra options to it at the spur of the moment. His head throbbed with pain from the effort, having pulled deep from the resonance. Augmenting an existing form for a technomancer was oftentimes painful, and if one was not careful it was potentially fatal.

"Suck it, bitch!" John yelled out into cyberspace as he shot at the chainmail wearing winged woman floating in the virtual sky. The augmented attack form launched a large yellow-white fireball at the woman, with jets of white hot plasma jumping out from it to attack bear programs and the generic agent icons as it went. Bears and agents alike fell apart like glass cubes, but the winged woman in chainmail screamed before her icon seemed to be vaporized in the attack.

Pain erupted across his back as a bear program's claws tore at John's armor form.

"I am so fucking tired of this!" John yelled as he turned his cannon on the agent that had just gouged him. Painful fire still burned within him as he fired at a virtual point blank range, and half a dozen more agents crashed as the yellow-white fireball streaked by.

Looking around, John could not find the other icon that looked like a woman. When another bear program gouged at his armor, John turned the cannon on it. His vision was briefly washed out as the disruptive code rent several agent programs to digital junk.

When his vision cleared, John noticed that there were no more agent programs anywhere. Letting his complex forms drop to normal, the huge cannon disappearing in a puff of white snowflakes to be replaced by his two pistols once again. The throbbing pain in his head did not go away, however.

Coming back to reality felt like a lesson in new kinds of pain. Stiffness from having felt like he had just slept on concrete for six months straight, a splitting headache that would have made Zeus ask for aspirin instead of Hephaestus' hammer to let Athena out of his skull, and a ringing in his ears like his head had just been used to ring a three meter gong.

"… you… ay… id?" a voice asked.

John blinked to try and wash away the stars in his vision. He then felt a pair of hands that were none too gentle in pulling him up. As soon as they were away the world seemed to slide out from under his feet.

"Whoa… sy there…" the voice said.

"Huh, whuh?" John asked, trying to look around. He saw things, but not clearly nor did he recognize some things for what they were. He was now wishing he had stayed in VR. At least he might have been able to think more clearly.

"… over… kiddo." came another voice. This one sounded like Valkyrie. At least John thought it was Valkyrie.

Before he knew it, John realized he was floating. Several hands were on him, helping him down to sit on something soft. Once they were gone again the world spun out from under him. At least it felt like he landed on something soft. Whatever it was it felt way better than whatever he was peeled off of.

There were sounds buzzing around him, voices and others he could only think of as obnoxious. After a while things started to seem clearer. That was when he realized he was lying down inside Valkyrie's truck.

His arm ached as John pushed himself upright. At least now he could keep his balance as he sat.

"Feeling better, kid?" Morph asked as he walked up to Valkyrie's truck from behind. He had two red and white cans in his hands, offering one to John. It was sealed and looked like it had been taken out of a cooler not more than a minute or two ago. John accepted it and popped the top.

"Hunter's finishing up the details with the Knight." Morph told him before taking a sip of his own can. "At least no one got killed this time."

John downed a large mouthful of cola. It was cool, tasted good, better than buzz cola, and felt great to wet his parched mouth. "What happened?" he asked, his voice still cracking with dryness.

"Their leader's name is Tina." Morph said, "She confessed to taking Alice's commlink and all after everything went to hell in a hand basket. Pretty much clears things up for the family. The Knight's gonna take her in. We're pretty much off the hook since we didn't kill anyone influenced by that BTL."

"And… the family?" John asked.

Morph sipped his soda again. "I already called in about that. There's probably enough evidence there for them to know Dean's clean. I expect we'll get paid as soon as Dean's released."

John took another chug of his soda. The bubbles tickled his tongue.

"Everything's taken care of." said Hunter as she walked up. "And some pretty scary stuff, too."

"Like what?" Morph asked.

"Turns out the ringleader, Tina, is a hacker." Hunter told them. "Knight dug up some stuff on her. Got fired from her last job for hacking into places she shouldn't've been. By the way," she turned to John, "just what was that you hit her agent with?"

"Huh?" John asked back.

"This." Hunter said, bringing up a few ARO images from the fight in cyberspace. One showed John's icon with the massive cannon braced against his shoulder, while another showed what she said was Tina's agent's icon being hit and the fiery beams lancing out to hit other agents.

"Oh, a B.F.G. Infinity. Made it myself." John said, figuring Hunter was asking about the threaded attack program he had made.

"Pretty nasty program you've got there. Crashing half a dozen agents left and right." Hunter told him.

John only nodded. He had no idea how to tell the others that Tina was a technomancer and the flying virtual copy was a machine sprite. At least, he figured Tina was a technomancer when he figured out why the floating virtual woman did not seem quite right to be an agent. That was when John felt the resonance within the sprite, and then Tina.

But no one asked him about it, so he really did not feel any need to tell anyone.

"Surprise, surprise. Figured you guys'd show up again." came a familiar voice. Looking up, John saw Detective Jack Diamond step into view. "Just what brings you all here?"

Slipping a hand up his sleeve, John pulled out Alice's commlink. "This." he said. "I ain't messed with it. Found it at Red Wire."

Jack took the commlink, looking it over. "You should've brought this to our attention sooner." he said in a very displeasing tone.

"Cut the kid some slack, dick." Morph piped in. "If he hadn't, we wouldn't've been here, and you'd have another dead security guard and wrecked corp to clean up after."

"I'll see what I can do." Jack said as he walked off with Alice's commlink in hand.

"Are all cops dicks?" asked John.

"Thankfully, no." Hunter answered. A little bit later John remembered she was also a bounty hunter, which was sort of like being a cop in John's way of thinking.

While he was taking another chug of his soda, everyone's commlinks beeped. John noticed it was a money transfer from the Don. Right away he accepted it.

"Looks like the job's done." Morph said. "If you don't mind I'm gonna head off."

"Sure." said Hunter as Morph walked off. "So kiddo, feeling alright?"

"Yeah." John told her as he stood. His head still throbbed a little, but the pain was certainly not as bad as it was a while ago.

"Call if you need anything." Hunter told him as he walked off.

"Sure, sure." John said, waving to Valkyrie and Hunter as he left.

Making his own way home, John hit a coyote entrance to the tunnels below Denver on his way home. What he found when he got there probably ranked up with one of his worst nightmares.

The door to his home was wide open, with smoke pouring out. It did not look like a fire was burning but had been put out not too long ago. John figured he might have smelled the smoke if it were not for the exhaust of his motorcycle and the not so pleasant smell of these particular tunnels to begin with.

"Awe, shit." cussed John. He sought out the signal of the commlink that served as the central home node so he could see the recordings of his microdrones and figure out what happened. He had only gotten to the recordings just before something happened when he heard a familiar voice.

"Well now. Such a shame." came Shaq's voice from behind John.

"Shut it, Shaq." John growled as he continued to skim the trideo recordings from the microdrones. He was hardly surprised to see that it was Shaq with two other gangers breaking into his place. Already he expected they started the fire, but decided to make sure first.

"Wouldn't've happened if ya'd paid for protection." Shaq continued.

John turned to face the larger, dark skinned ganger. In the dim light, even with John's lowlight vision, the ganger's skin almost blended in with the shadows. The trideo playback still played, and showed Shaq and the other two leaving John's door in a hurry, with flames soon licking at the open door. With some better light, John could identify the other two, and they were with Shaq right now. John never claimed Shaq or his lackeys were ever the sharpest knives in the drawer. Saying they were sharp would be like saying a butter knife could cut you simply by looking at it.

"You mean paid you to stay the fuck out of my shit." John returned.

"Is there a difference?" Shaq asked.

Ignoring the question, John asked, "You did this on your own, or did T-Bar order it?"

Shaq grinned, his tarnished teeth shining in the poor light.

"Fuck it. You're all dead anyway." He paused the trideo recording, mentally shoving the ARO out of the way.

The smile from Shaq's face was even bigger, and maybe the ganger even had a somewhat witty comeback if he had a few more seconds to think one up. That did not matter as John drew his Warhawk with his left hand and shot Shaq in the mouth. The gunshot echoed through the tunnels and Shaq's brain matter now decorated one of the walls. Whatever that comeback was, it died with Shaq.

John was completely emotionless as he turned his Warhawk on the other two gangers as they fled. One shot each, the retorts deafening in the confined space of the tunnel, and they were down.

Slowly John walked up to the gangers as they tried to regain their footing. Another shot, each in the back of the skull, and the job was done.

The security trideo was brought back up so John could watch the rest of it. A few minutes after Shaq had left a few of the tunnel's squatters had arrived to see what was happening. One of them, a girl who's mother John had helped out more than once, seemed to freak out and then nearly pass out. She was pulled away by her mother.

Through the view of one of the microdrones, the one that showed the door to his place, John saw what he would describe as a water elemental appear out of nowhere. It passed through the doorway as if it was entering his place, but it appeared as it entered as well. With its great watery arms it began dousing the fire. Once the fire had been put out, the water elemental collected itself and vanished. At least that explained the scorch marks and smoke of an extinguished fire, and not a drop of water.

Through the other two microdrones, John saw the girl weakly standing back up. He guessed she had just awakened.

To John, however, living with an awakened preteen in the neighborhood was the least of his concerns. Right now it was time to pay T-Bar a visit.

John stepped through the doorway to his tiny home, surveying the damage done. The two Doberman drones looked fine, and he grinned as they awoke. Their submachine guns already loaded and ready.

It looked like Hunter might be getting that call much sooner than either of them expected.


	6. Run 06 : The Flip Side

Run 06 : The Flip Side (based on the mission written by Stephen McQuillan; updated 2013/05/23)

John sighed as he stretched out in his new bed. Well, in all honesty it was a Salvation Army sleeping bag on a threadbare rug on a concrete floor in the office of a storage yard. On the plus side he had plenty of room for his two Doberman drones and motorcycle, and more. And at least there were still the bare necessities, like a small refrigerator and working plumbing. All in all, it was a step up from the bomb shelter in the sewers.

At least the others who lived in the storage yard had apparently been apathetic about the office John was now living in. Now if only they had been apathetic about him when he moved in. One guy who was either drunk, slotted, or something had gotten the wrong idea about John. Ultimately John had been able to save his own ass, literally, and that guy was found the next day unconscious, with an empty bank account, and enough extras to ruin his reputation for life.

In the mean time John had also been trying to make the warehouse a bit more homey. Right now it was uncomfortably cool and wide open.

It was later in the day, while John was fixing up one of his Doberman drones, when the thrash metal music by an all troll band named 'Hammerhead' was interrupted by an incoming call. John knew the number, so he accepted the call on the third ring.

"Oy chummer." grunted Miguel, "You'ze got some work tonight. The boss needs to find a lost bird and you've been tapped. A'ight?" He paused as he adjusted his large, heavy, black leather jacket on his shoulders, and before John could say anything continued, "Good, so don't be keepin' the boss waiting. I'll meet you at Casquilho Imports at six o'clock. Go to the back door, don't try and be some wise guy asking for the don up front. Don't worry, you'll see me."

Without waiting for an answer, Miguel ended the call. Considering the ork, John wondered how anyone could miss him in the first place.

Splitting his attention between the depths of the matrix and his work on the Doberman, John did some searches on Casquilho Imports. After a few minutes he basically had confirmation about what he suspected about the place. Simply put, the Casquilho's used the place to fence smuggled goods.

It had also been an unusual experience for John, wholly diving the digital ether while still working on his drone in the real world, all without missing a step even though it had only been a few minutes. He hoped this would have been worth the trouble he had gone through to learn how to do this.

After dinner of a microwaved soyburger and bottle of tap water, John headed up north to Casquilho Imports.

Miguel was standing outside. Billy and a troll were already standing outside too, milling about. For a moment Billy and Miguel looked like they could have been related, seeing the two of them standing together. The thought was transitory at best, as Billy had much fairer skin compared to the Latino ork, and lacked the oversized tusks common to all orks.

Then there was also the fact that Miguel was infinitely more sharply dressed despite a cheap, off the rack, one size fits none suit that did not fit his broad shoulders and thick chest very well.

The troll himself was a new face. At least John had no sense of familiarity when looking at the massive troll. Taller than the average troll, he stood an easy meter taller than John, and looked buff enough to dead lift his Katana-11 and break it in half over his head. The troll looked like the kind of guy you would not want to meet in a well lit alley, despite the fact his clothes were neat and clean denim jeans, shirt, and jacket. Clean shaven, the only hair visible was a neatly trimmed Mohawk over his head and between a large set of curling horns.

The troll noticed him as John was walking up. He turned away from the other two and walked up to meet John.

"Can I help you, son?" the troll asked in a surprisingly civil and intelligent tone of voice and a slightly southern accent.

John was almost right away feeling rather pissy. "Yeah, you can get out of the way." he answered as he tried to walk up to Miguel.

"You can't be here, son." the troll said, stepping in John's way to kneel down, putting a great big meaty hand on John's shoulder. His hand was heavy and John could feel the strength in his grip. "Should just go on home."

Sighing, John said, "I'm here for work. What're you here for, shade?"

The troll stood to his full height, which at their proximity made John feel less than half as tall as the troll. "You better watch your mouth." he growled.

John was reaching for his Eichiro Hatamoto II at his back, a handgun he had taken from a dead ganger a week ago, when Miguel spoke up. "Oy, easy 'ere Hoss. Boy'z 'ere for work."

"This punk?" the troll, Hoss, asked.

John held his hand on the gun's grip, but did not draw it.

"Yez!" Miguel cried.

"Really?" Hoss asked, looking back at John.

"I'm a hacker. Chrome dome over there can't hack his way out of a paper bag." John said with a scowl.

"Hey! I can too!" cried Billy. To prove the point he popped out the spurs in both arms.

"Put those away before you get hurt!" Hoss told Billy.

"Yeah!" added John.

"And are you fucking serious?" Hoss asked Miguel, "He's a kid! Can't be more than ten!"

"Twelve." John corrected.

"That's not any better." grumbled Hoss.

The rumble of an engine drew their attention, though John kept looking up at Hoss. "Trouble at the door again, Cypher?" came Hunter's voice.

"Naw, just getting some shade." John returned.

"You know this kid?" Hoss asked, pointing a meaty finger at John's head.

"Been workin' with him a month, now." Hunter replied, pulling her blue helmet off and stowing it under the seat of her matching blue Contrail. "Intelligent, smart mouth, sharp tongue, and a kick ass hacker."

"You serious?" Hoss asked.

"What, you think Billy there's a hacker?" Hunter asked back. "First time I see him try to hack it's a public school. Sets off every alarm he can when he busts through the firewall."

"He did that?" Hoss asked, jerking a thumb back at Billy.

"Yup." Hunter said.

"Ain't hackers supposed to get in without doin' that?" asked Hoss.

"Yup." John and Hunter said in unison.

"Ain't you ever gonna let me live it down?" asked Billy, sounding a little whiny.

"Nope." answered John sharply and without hesitation.

"Oy yuz!" called Miguel.

John stood his ground, not slipping his hand from behind him until Hoss had turned away. Glancing to Miguel he saw the ork waving them to follow him.

The ork led them around to the back door. There he knocked on it twice and motioned for everyone to quickly enter once it opened.

The lighting in the back of the shop was dim, though it mattered little to John's eyes. The dim light gave an extra ambiance to the antiquated feel and smell of the goods that John could see. It was clear that nothing here was made from fake wood and plastic. This was especially true when he laid eyes on a particular object that was clearly Mexican, not Aztlan, and with a price tag that made his eyes nearly pop out of their sockets.

"Come in, come in." he heard the Don's voice call.

John was the last one to enter the room. He was quick to notice the Don had the same two guards as last time. One was a broad chested Rastafarian who made no effort to hide his nickel plated Predators, and the other was a Latino with a pair of knives and a wicked grin that made John think of a hyena for some reason. He wondered what was up with the weapons this time.

"I'm glad you all could make it." the Don said from behind his desk, drawing John to look at him. "I'd like you to track down and bring in a man for me. Terry Wyatt."

"What do you want this guy for?" asked Hunter. Looking up at her, John could see concern on a very serious looking face.

"He's a driver for me." the Don answered. "He failed to check in after his last job. I just want you to bring him in so I can talk to him." There was something different, something John could not figure out or identify, something that made him feel nervous.

"Easy 'nough." gruffed Billy. "How much you askin'?"

"One thousand now, and nine thousand more when you bring him in." the Don answered.

"Don't try to negotiate." John blurted out before Billy could try and feign disinterest in seventeen grand.

"Why shouldn't he?" Hoss asked.

"'Cause if brains were gunpowder he wouldn't have enough to blow his nose." John answered.

Hunter choked back what John thought would have been a fit of laughter.

"Well, if money is not enough we might be able to barter for equipment instead." the Don told them.

"Now we're talkin'!" exclaimed Billy.

John largely ignored Billy's attempts at negotiating a higher payout in equipment, and instead started a data search on Terry Wyatt. He did not have much more than a confirmation of Terry's home address when he heard Hunter talk to him.

"C'mon kid, we're done negotiating."

"So how much're we getting?" John asked as he split his attentions between his searches on Terry and the rest of the world. Hunter walked ahead of the others as they headed towards the shop's back door.

"Weren't you paying attention?" asked Billy. John thought there was a muttered 'dumbass' just after that.

"No because I was looking up Terry, dumbass." John replied as they stepped outside.

"What're you talkin' 'bout?" Billy asked.

"Just figurin' where he lives, that's all." John told them.

"So where're we off to?" Billy asked.

"Terry's home first." Hunter answered, walking over to her own motorcycle.

"Why there?" Billy asked.

"Why not?" John asked back.

"Why don't we all take my truck?" Hoss asked. "Got enough room for all of us."

John had to admit to himself he liked the idea. There were two conditions, though. "I call shotgun!" he called out immediately, "And I ain't leavin' my motorcycle."

"No fair!" cried Billy.

"You got room for two cycles?" asked Hunter.

"Sure 'nough." Hoss said. John watched as the troll walked over to a rather large looking truck. A quick search on the matrix returned it as a '69 SAMAG Vinnig, a large off-road racing truck made for harsh environments and high performance. The bed of the truck certainly did look large enough to hold both his and Hunter's motorcycles.

"Okay." John said, sending a command to his motorcycle to drive itself to him.

"Neat trick." commented Hoss as the black Katana-11 drove itself over to John's side.

"Tricked it out myself." John said, smiling big.

"Yeah, sure you did!" Billy said mockingly.

"Tell me," Hoss whispered as he bent over to get a good grip on John's motorcycle, "does he look like a walking penis to you?"

John gave Billy a twice over from head to toe. It surprised him that he had not seen it before. "Guess he's a dick in more ways than one." he said with a chuckle. When he looked back he saw Hoss pushing his motorcycle the rest of the way in the bed of the truck. It was when he heard Hunter chuckling that he realized his mouth was gaping open.

Hoss's truck was rather nice inside. Not luxurious, but comfortable, quite warm, and far from stuffy.

"Here, you should take a look at this." Hunter said to John, holding a picture in her hand.

"What's this?" John asked, taking the picture.

"Terry and his wife." Hunter said.

"Analog." John muttered as he looked at the photo. He also scanned it with the commlink he wore on his arm to have an easier digital copy to work with.

The photograph itself had been taken at some kind of social function, of a woman sitting on a man's lap. With no other adults in the photo, John figured the man was Terry Wyatt. Once he noticed the matching rings he figured the pretty blond on Terry's lap was his wife.

Mentally he pulled up the contact info for Merlin and called him.

"Hey kid. Still no word on those guns." came Merlin's voice. In the ARO was the same gray bearded wizard in a dark blue robe and matching pointed hat.

"Thanks, but it's not that." John told him, "Lookin' for some info on a coyote."

"Didn't think you'd need to smuggle something. Thought you knew some trails." The wizard tipped its head inquisitively.

John looked out the window to watch the buildings slowly pass by. "Naw, not that. Lookin' for a Terry Wyatt."

"Best stay clear of him if you can." Merlin told him, his icon changing to look sternly at John and waving a narrow wand at him. "You ain't the first to call me about him, thinking I know him."

"Didn't think the Don would be makin' calls for him if he hired me to bring him in." John mused.

"It wasn't, and that's what worries me, kid." Merlin said with a serious tone that drew John's full attention. The icon put its hands on its hips.

"The mafia's not making the calls." Merlin continued, "The Russians are looking for him. You might think he's a mafia smuggler but he's been working for two, or so I've gathered. I've also gotten wind that a go-gang called the Aurora Angels picked up the load he dumped in the Warrens. That coyote's in deep shit."

"I heard of the Angels, but what'd'ya mean 'deep shit'?" asked John.

"Smugglers that dump their loads too much end up dead." Merlin answered gravely. "It's about a century old, but look up a few a few movies called 'Star Wars', particularly a character named Han Solo." For some reason that name sounded familiar to John, though he could not quite figure out why.

"Anyway, if you're workin' for the Don, you're bringing him to his death. Poor kids."

"Huh?" asked John.

"Terry's adopted a lot of meta-kids." Merlin said. "Got a person I know who knows Terry. Helped set up several SINs and all. Well, they do say no good deed goes unpunished."

"Ewe." John said.

"What is it?" he heard Hunter ask.

"Huh?" John asked back, only now realizing he had spoken aloud.

"You went 'ewe'." Hunter told him.

"Called someone 'bout Terry." John said.

"Anything else you need, kid?" Merlin asked.

"So what'd you learn?" pressed Hunter.

"Naw, I think I'm good for now. Thanks." John told Merlin, ending the call.

"That he's a dead man." John said aloud.

"How d'ya mean?" asked Hoss.

"My friend mentioned some character called 'Han Solo'. Not really sure what was meant."

"Awe shit." Hunter muttered.

"Is it bad?" Hoss asked.

"Really bad." Hunter said. "He's an old movie character. A smuggler. When he's brought in he's already dumped cargo and a crime boss has a bounty on the guy. Dead or alive."

"Don said he wanted to talk." piped in Billy. "He's not gonna kill him."

"Yeah, sure." Hunter said softly. John figured she was not too sure about that based on the tone of her voice.

The next several minutes were spent in near silence.

The neighborhood itself looked like it had been loaded with middle and upper class families and homes. Many homes now looked either empty and abandoned, or now occupied by those who normally could not have afforded such a home in a prime location. Hunter had even mentioned that the hassles of border crossing had spurred the richer families to move to either the Hub or to Gateway. She seemed a little evasive about how she knew this, saying that she used to work with the border patrol. John also knew she lived in Gateway, and likely knew many people who had moved there.

"That's unusual." John heard Hunter remark. "Park over by the corner, there."

Looking up, John looked out at the street. It looked like a stretch of suburbia that had been allowed to grow old and worn.

"What's unusual?" Billy asked.

"Odd. Strange. Bizarre. Weird." John said, rattling off on his own. His gaze never drifted from the empty stare out of the window.

"I know what it means." snapped Billy.

"Then how about that shiny black sedan in the driveway?" Hunter asked.

John had noticed the sedan, but had thought nothing of it. A quick search through the matrix brought up a wealth of details about the car that now made it a glaring oddity in the neighborhood. Especially the price tag, as it was worth more than what John expected any of the homes here to be worth.

"I don't get it." Billy muttered.

With a heavy sigh John dropped his head into both hands. From there he said, "You'd never afford a used car like that, numb nuts." He then split his attention between the real world and the matrix to speed hack the car's node.

"Could too!" Billy childishly returned.

"Would you two settle down?" Hunter barked, reprimanding John and Billy.

"They always like this?" asked Hoss.

"Seems like it." Hunter told him with a sigh.

The car's high price tag had not included a good security system, John found out.

"So we just gonna sit here, or are we gonna bust in?" whined Billy.

"Slap a downer, will ya?" John asked as he worked his way to another connection from the car. Pretending he was the car itself made things a lot easier in getting into the next node, riding within the data line itself to the next device.

"So what're we gonna do?" asked Billy.

"We could always try knocking on the front door." Hoss suggested.

John had gotten into the next node, and from the sculpting of the inside it looked like it was a cheap commlink. Pinging it from himself and the car told him it was located somewhere inside the house itself.

Billy groaned.

With a virtual hand John discretely turned on the commlink's mic.

"Is there anything else I can get for you?" a woman's voice asked.

"Notink, thank you." answered a man's voice with a thick Russian accent. John immediately thought of the Vory.

John found the node for Hoss's truck and right away started working on breaking through the firewall.

"Knocking might be best." Hunter mused, "Though you're staying here, Billy."

"Fuck that shit."

The firewall of Hoss's truck was just as weak as the cheap commlink. It only took seconds to get through. With no protective software running John went straight for the truck's stereo system.

"So how do you think we should see if Terry's home?" Hoss asked.

"We listen." John answered, connecting the audio stream to the stereo.

"I don't really see why you have to wait." the woman said, "I can have Terry call you when he gets home."

"Iz no problem." replied the Russian man, "I have notink else to do."

"What the fuck's this?" Billy asked.

"Someone's commlink in the house." John said, grinning.

"Wait, you…?"

"Hacked that European sedan out there, someone's commlink, and your truck in less than thirty seconds." John finished.

The stereo was silent now, save for the occasional chink of dishes coming from somewhere in the house.

"Now did that Russian guy say Terry's not home?" Hoss asked.

"I think it was the woman." Hunter said. "Sounded like it might've been Carole."

"Who?" John asked.

"Terry's wife."

"Ah. Well, we can take a look." John said, pressing a concealed button underneath the commlink on his wrist. He figured he was going to like this new commlink case.

"So we get to go and bust the door down?" Billy asked excitedly.

"Hardly." Hunter replied sternly.

"Got something better." John said, pulling out his yokujin drone. With his inside access to Hoss's truck he opened up a window a little to let it fly free. He also connected the drone's camera to the image screen in Hoss's truck and had the windshield black itself.

"Neat trick." commented Hoss as they watched from the little drone's viewpoint. It zipped across the street so low that the gravel of the asphalt looked like boulders, and the upcoming curb the Great Wall Of China.

"Just how tricked out is that thing?" Hunter asked.

"It's really good at hiding," John said, "and it's got better sensors than a spy fly can carry."

"Yeah, right." scoffed Billy.

At the last second the yokujin zipped up, clearing the curb and buzzing so close to the nicely cut lawn that it might impress a smuggler for nape of the Earth flying. As it neared the house it pulled up into a steep climb, slowing down as it neared a window. It landed, sticking to the house's wall and turned to look into the window. John had to turn the image to right it.

The inside of the house looked nice, warm, and cozy. The dark haired man in the neat black suit looked way out of place.

"Guess that's the Russian." Hunter said.

It was not long until the woman walked back into the room, carrying two drinks and handing one of them to the man. She was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a buttoned up flannel shirt that was not tucked in

"Spasibo. Er, thank you." the man said as he accepted the offered drink.

"And that looks like Carole." Hunter added.

"So what's next?" Billy asked. It sounded like finally accepted that they were not going to bust down the door.

"Time to make a call." Hunter answered.

John cut off his connections to the European sedan and commlink, and recalling Laserbeak. Once the yokujin was at the truck John opened the window again for it to fly inside, and then he cut his connection to Hoss's truck.

After a few minutes, Hunter said, "Head for Gun Club and Mississippi. I'll give you directions."

About half an hour later they reached their destination.

The area was rather sparse, with the Aurora Warrens almost literally a stone's throw to the south west. The remains of Buckley Air Force Base was more straight west, with ruined buildings not even visible in the distance.

Apparently waiting for them at the corner was a woman wearing tight jeans and a tank top underneath an open over shirt. Her blonde hair was fully tied back in a simple ponytail.

"Jana?" Hunter asked as they approached.

"You must be Hunter." Jana said. "You can go park 'round there." she said, pointing to a store named 'American Gun Supply', "'Round back, your truck'll be safe."

John, Hunter, and Billy followed Jana while Hoss parked his truck. She stopped in a secluded alleyway, and there dropped a triangular courier's pack from her back to pull out a crowbar. Inside John could see rope, carabineers, pitons, and everything else a good climber would have. "Hope you boys and girls don't mind walking." she said as she lifted up a grate.

Climbing down the grate into the sewers was nothing different than when John lived in the fallout shelter.

But these tunnels were different in their twists and turns, and not just because John had never walked them before. After about half a kilometer of walking John found it impossible to find any kind of matrix connection outside of everyone's commlink. This was quick to annoy him, much like hearing a monotonous tone would be for a regular person after hearing it for several hours straight.

Though while John may not have talked, he did listen. At least, as best as he could with the grating feeling on his brain.

Along the way Jana told them that she had worked with Terry a long time ago but had since fallen out of touch. Despite Billy's disbelief she knew nothing else.

After a stretch of time John could not count he recognized a stretch of tunnels Jana led them to. After a while longer he felt a new signal. Unfortunately it was not a full on connection to the matrix, but merely a growing collection of more commlinks. There was a warm glow that was beginning to creep out of the darkness after the last turn. To what made John's eyes sensitive to heat, he could see it seeping out from underneath a door. It was muffled, but he could also hear country music playing.

"Here's the place." Jana said as she walked in, bathing the tunnel in bright light and louder music.

"You'd better wait outside." Hoss said.

"He's right." added Hunter.

Billy said nothing, but made a teasing gesture as he nearly danced his way in. John flipped him off before turning around to lean against the wall and look out down the tunnels away from the bar. At least the music was barely audible once the door closed.

"Wish I'd known we be walking to Five By Five. Fuck." John muttered more to himself than anyone. He leaned against the wall and then slid to sit against it.

Maybe it was from a bit of sympathy, but Hunter opened up a connection to John so he could see and hear through her cybernetic implants. She gave him a 'read only' kind of access, but had set her eyes and ears to pick up everything they could. After a little fiddling he was able to muffle out the country music.

Most of the talk in the bar was idle chat, and Hunter did not learn much more than what he already had and told them.

The chat had been so boring sounding that John was caught completely off guard to the sound of splintering wood. He barely noticed two large men as they walked through the door into Five By Five.

"I am Ivan Romanov and this bar is closed." John heard someone say in a heavy Russian accent.

"What happened?" John sent to Hunter.

"They kicked the door in with Terry. Didn't you see it?" John received in a text back.

Through Hunter's eyes John watched as she lashed out with her grapple hand. John took this as a cue to do something.

Pushing the AROs aside, John pulled both of his Predators.

First to come out through the broken door were two big men that looked like brothers with their buzzed short hair.

When a man went flying back out of the bar, he waited to hear what he had to say. When the man cussed in what John thought was Russian, John plugged a regular round from each pistol into the man.

The next person that came barreling out of Five By Five looked like Terry. "Hold it!" John yelled, ordering his pistols to re-chamber a stick-n-shock round.

Terry stopped, raising his hands and turning around slowly. "You're just a kid." he remarked when his hazel eyes fell upon John.

"Yeah, and I'm not in a good mood." John told him, "So if you'll just step over there…" He indicated with the Predator in his left hand off to his left. Terry obliged, keeping his hands raised.

A few seconds later another Russian came flying out of Five By Five and landed roughly where Terry had been standing. A quick glance told John he would not be getting up anytime soon, with torn and bloody clothing. Billy had no finesse.

"Now if you'll just keep quiet, we'll just wait for my friends to finish up." John told Terry.

John heard the scuffling of feet behind him, and swung a Predator around to see. In the low light he could see a pale scrawny elf with black dyed hair faded at the roots standing behind him. After a second of staring at John he turned and ran off the other way. John casually held the Predator upwards, but kept the other leveled on Terry.

"Mother fucker!" they heard Billy yell. John only needed one guess as to why.

"Ya can come out now!" John yelled back.

"What is it?" asked Hunter, the first to step out the door.

"A coyote." John answered.

"Nice job." Hunter said as she stepped up to Terry. "I'm sure we don't need to do this, but." She let the sentence drop as she patted Terry down for any weapons. "He's clean." she said.

John holstered his Predators, and Terry relaxed his arms.

"So we finally can take 'im in to the Don?" asked Billy.

"I don't know." John said.

"C'mon, let's have a drink." Hunter said, leading Terry back into the bar. This time John followed in.

The inside of Five By Five was somewhat cozy, with a handful of tables along the right and the bar to the left. Right away John noticed a sign that said "Drop Them Or Be Dropped" that was hanging just above a simple box. Inside that box were several handguns and a few knives. John deposited his two Predators and Ruger Super Warhawk revolver. With his holdouts almost impossible to detect, and being they would be too much trouble to remove, John left them up his sleeves.

Hunter and Terry took a table, while John climbed onto a stool at the bar. The place was a mess after the fight, and Hoss had just finished removing the last Russian by throwing him out the door like a sack of soybeans.

Jana was still there, along with another woman. She was Latino, slightly taller than John, and heavy set. They were just sitting down at the table in the far corner of the bar.

"You with them?" asked the bartender. He had brown hair with reddish highlights and green eyes.

"Her and the troll," John said, "but I really don't wanna claim anything with baldy."

"That's alright. I'm not one to pry. You got a name?" he asked.

"Cypher." John said.

"Call me Matty." the bartender said. John heard the rush of a pressure hose, and when he looked over he saw Matty setting a tall glass of cola onto the bar next to him. "No charge." he said.

John thought he heard somewhere that bars typically gave sodas and such to whoever was a designated driver. He nodded his thanks and took the drink.

"You're not going to take me in, are you?" Terry asked Hunter.

"I'm not sure." Hunter answered.

"I can pay you. I'll match whatever he's payin' if you'll let me go." Terry told her.

"Nothun' doin'." Billy grumbled. "I ain't takin' a rep hit to let you go."

"Stow it." barked Hunter. "The Don's payin' us eighty-five hundred each to bring you in."

Terry slumped in his seat.

"Why the hell're we just sittin' around here?" demanded Billy.

"Shut up or I'll rob you blind." John told him.

"So you're their hacker?" Matty asked.

"Why do everyone think he's a hacker?" John asked back, jabbing his thumb at Billy.

"The Don just wants to talk!" Billy cried.

"Then I'm a fifty year old troll!" John called back. "I don't think it's just words he wants."

"I'm thinking the same." added Hunter.

"Now I've not worked for the Don before," Hoss said, "but sum'thin' 'bout him just didn't sit right. Dunno if I made 'im nervous, or what."

"I made him nervous." declared Billy.

"Your stupidity makes me scared shitless." returned John.

"I doubt it was you, Hoss." Hunter said, "Last job had a lady of your stature with us, and he certainly didn't seem scared at all." She looked thoughtful, staring off at nothing in particular.

"Never a good thing when you dump cargo." Matty said.

With a thought John shifted a hundred nuyen to a credstick, pulled it and slid it to Matty. "Just how bad is it?" he asked.

Matty slotted the credstick, then slid it back to John before saying softly, "Two or three dumps and you usually disappear. Maybe just torture for info, like where the cargo was dropped and all."

"So he'd be more interested in the cargo?" John asked softly.

Matty nodded.

"I say we get the Don's stuff for him." John said.

"And what about Terry?" asked Hoss.

"Does he have to know we found him?" John asked. "Which's more valuable: a coyote that drops and runs, or the cargo?"

"Kid's got a point." Hunter said.

"No he doesn't. The Don's given us a job to do." Billy said with conviction.

"One more bitch about money or the job and it won't be Cypher draining your bank accounts!" Hunter declared very loudly.

"I can show you where I left it." Terry told them.

"And what if the Don doesn't pay us?" Billy asked.

Hoss groaned.

"I keep tellin' ya. Don't spend your cred on drugs, booze, and hookers!" exclaimed John.

Billy lunged for John, and as John slipped himself between two barstools he saw Hoss lift Billy up by the scruff of his neck and drop him flat on his back to the floor. Billy grunted as he was laid out like a rug.

John climbed back up onto the barstool he had been sitting on.

"Now I don't care what you spend your money on, but ya should always leave yerself next month's rent." growled Hoss.

"So you're not turning him in?" asked Jana.

"Not this time." Hunter said as she stood.

John groaned softly as he stood.

"Here." Matty said, sliding a can of soda to John. "For the road."

"Thanks." John said, taking the can before following Terry, Hunter, and Jana out the door.

The long walk back to American Gun Supply seemed to take even longer than the walk to Five By Five. Along the way he cracked open the can of soda and had it drank well before they reached their exit point. There Jana went her own way.

After a brief discussion about seating in Hoss's truck, it was decided that John and Hunter would follow on their motorcycles instead. The alternative had been to sedate Billy and throw him in the back.

Terry gave them directions into the Aurora Warrens. Along the way Hunter told them that a gang called the Aurora Angels had apparently picked up the salvage. John also mentioned that they had a bunch of hackers in their ranks, so Billy would be worthless in a fight.

"So, how're we gonna find 'em?" asked Hoss.

"Cypher?" asked Hunter.

"I guess just drive around their territory." John said.

"You don't know how to call 'em?" Billy asked.

"You know how to call Ghostwalker?" John asked back.

"Yeah. 'Hey, Ghostwalker!'" mimicked Billy.

John only shook his head with a sigh.

"What about their hangout?" asked Hoss.

"Got an idea where that is." John told them.

It was a bad stretch of Aurora when the Aurora Angels found them. The streets were more caked with debris, though Hoss's truck had no trouble navigating over these rough stretches. On their ill sounding motorcycles, two Aurora Angels passed them by, their eyes more on the road to avoid a potentially fatal accident.

"Oy, this is Angel turf! You lookin' for a beat down?" called another Angel from behind.

Looking back John saw eight more Aurora Angels.

"Pull it over." Hunter said.

Hoss stopped at a relatively clear stretch of road, with Hunter and John stopping just behind.

The neighborhood itself did not look like the kind of place you would want to stop, and everyone but Billy knew it. John figured Billy felt he could take on anything the Warrens could dish out.

The Angels pulled up around them, their motorcycles sounding like sick animals as they idled before being switched off. John was able to get a better look at them, wearing leather jackets of various colors but all had a letter 'A' flanked by silver wings on their backs. For weapons they had a variety of chains, clubs, or knives, though no guns as far as John could see. They all looked worse fed than John felt most of the time. At least, not when he was at a job interview with a Johnson most of the time.

"You know this's our turf, right?" asked one of the Angels. He looked rather pale, the kind of pale that would mean he would burn in the sun instead of tan, and maybe twenty centimeters taller than John. He also noticed that the Angel actually had a gun. Of course, with such horrible sounding motorcycles and underfed gang members, the big money question now was 'Is it loaded?'

"Are you Base-13?" asked Hunter.

"Yeah." the same Angel said.

"We're here for some property you picked up." Hunter said.

Base-13 grinned, his teeth looking just a little tarnished. Next to Billy, though, they looked blindingly white. "So, how much you got?" he asked.

"Why should we pay you for the chips?" Billy asked, "I'm sure I can take ya."

"Two to one? I don't think so." Base-13 returned, his eyes shifting about.

John was about to pull both of his Predators, but noticed Hunter was not reaching for her guns. Hoss looked a little nervous, but still had not taken any kind of aggressive posture.

"Relax, would ya?" Hunter said to Billy.

"Like hell I need you guys!" Billy declared, "I'll take all of you on myself!"

"Yeah, and start hitting us when the first one that gets through your Swiss cheese firewall uploads a Negator to your eye." snipped John. It did not surprise him at all that Billy seemed to forget that the Aurora Angels were a bunch of hackers. Just how good they were John had no idea, but when Billy had a hole in his firewall large enough to drive a tank through, good did not matter.

"Okay." Base-13 said, nervously looking at them. He licked his chapped lips before asking, "How 'bout we make it easier on all of us?"

"What're you thinking?" Hunter asked.

"Old school." Base-13 told them, his eyes still bouncing between each of them except for John, "Battle of champs. Our best hacker against yours in a cyber fight."

John stepped up to Base-13. "Okay, I accept." he said.

It took a few seconds for Base-13 to realize John was there. Looking at John he asked, "You say something?"

"Yeah. I accept. Me 'n your best hacker." John said. "Unless you're gonna wuss out."

"You're fuckin' serious?" Base-13 asked, laughing and looking back to Billy, then to Hunter. "You really shittin' me?"

"I'm alright." Hunter said, "He doesn't have any skill at all." she added.

"Hey! I do too!" Billy cried.

John noticed one of the Angels was looking a little nervous now. Base-13 did not seem to believe Hunter's boasting of John's skill. That or it just did not seem to impress him very much.

"I'll fuck 'im over." another called out as she stepped forward. She had olive skin, dark eyes, boyishly super short cut black hair, and a slim build. Including her clothing, John could have mistaken her for a boy in passing. In fact, in his first look at the Angels he had thought they were all boys.

"Gonna pop his cherry, Tenebrous?" asked an Angel. Several others giggled or broke out into fits of laughter. She responded by flipping off the one that spoke.

"You can try." John growled.

"Look for the 'link 'Arena'." Base-13 told them, grinning, "It'll be open for you to fight in."

Finding the commlink was easy. John logged himself into the arena commlink while he kept an eye out on the Angels. Tenebrous herself was caught by two Angels as she likely went wholly into VR. He casually flipped them off before sitting down and shifting himself into virtual reality.

The arena itself looked like the Coliseum in Rome floating in the digital void, though more of how people thought it looked a few thousand years ago, with a white marble finish and crimson velarium, a giant sail, to provide shade to the virtual spectators. On the inside the environment was complete with a blazing sun straight overhead, a hot wind carrying the stench of dried blood, and a roaring crowd of spectators. The black armored boots of John's icon crunched with every footstep, and he could feel the weight of his pistols in his hands. At least in sculpting the node arena, whoever actually did it was rather skilled.

Whatever Tenebrous' icon looked like it was nowhere to be seen.

The first blow came from behind, disruptive code burning as John's armor absorbed most of it. From the virtual crowd came a riotous cheer.

Icon spinning, John brought a pistol around to attack back. Seeing a distortion that might have been her icon, John attacked. A bolt of disruptive code flew at the distortion and seemed to strike something.

His analyze complex form, the red glowing eyes of his helmet, finally resolved the girl's icon as it moved about, peeling away data that hid her icon from him in VR, like wind blowing smoke away. She looked like a vampire knight out of a high fantasy trid, with shapely black armor plates and dark crimson highlights and a few bat wing and lizard frill accents. She wore no helm to show off a lovely face that bore a resemblance to her own, and long raven black hair the blew in the wind. She even had a pair of giant deamonic wings that flapped to keep her aloft. In one hand was a jagged sword that looked like was made from obsidian ripped from a live volcano and left to cool in the air.

"Think you can do better?" John asked in the Arena. In the matrix his voice did not sound like his own, but a chorus of a dozen different people talking in unison.

"Yes I can!" she cried as she came at him again, the sword in a double handed grip. John brought his other arm up to take the blow, sending a shower of sparks all over as the attack tried to break through his armor form. The blade hurt more this time.

"Gotta do way better than that!" John taunted as he took several steps back.

Tenebrous screamed a battle cry as she came at John. He braced himself for the attack, both arms up to shield him from her sword. Again sparks flew as the attack form sent its disruptive code at John, but it was the suddenly threaded shield that hurt more.

"Nice." John told her. With a thought his pistols were traded out for a sword of his own. "Here's mine!" he yelled as he full on swung with his sword at her. It impacted her armor heavily, and John actually lifted her up from the virtual ground with his baseball like swing. The virtual crowd went wild with cheers.

Screaming in extreme pain and terror, Tenebrous tried backing away from John's icon.

"Yeah, you know what this is." taunted John, holding his sword up for Tenebrous to see. Its mirrored blade reflected the Coliseum around them, its golden hilt and angelic wing cross guard glimmered like forbidden treasure. Even from the first hit, John could feel the tendrils of data, subtle as a spider's web, that would keep Tenebrous from easily logging off, and every blow that got through would affect her brain directly.

Focusing his mind into sword that was his black hammer complex form, John altered its code to seek out Tenebrous' icon. Pressure built up behind his eyes, but John shoved that feeling aside.

The wings of Tenebrous' icon flapped, and she dove for John. Like a showdown between two master swordsmen they swung their virtual blades at each other.

John roared in pain and frustration as he felt Tenebrous' attack form score a solid strike, its disruptive code burning like acid on his flesh, while his own black hammer could not connect. He stumbled on his virtual feet as he tried to keep standing.

Spinning to follow Tenebrous' icon as she flew around him, John could feel his black hammer being pulled towards her. Reversing his grip, John threw his mirrored sword at her like it was a spear. It sailed past her as she spun about in the virtual sky.

"You gotta do better than that!" chided Tenebrous.

Like he was yanking on the leash of a large animal, John's sword came flying back. It's perfectly polished blade ran straight threw her back, bursting straight through her chest between her breasts. There was a look of shock, and horrified surprise on her face as she gazed upon the sword blade sticking out of her chest.

Her icon came crashing down to the virtual landscape. Though her black wings looked fine they were spread wide and slumped along with her shoulders as she knelt on the hot virtual sand. Looking up John could see she knew defeat.

When Tenebrous tried to log off, John let her. There was a brief moment just before her icon disappeared that John knew she could see him holding his black hammer form in his own virtual hand, it's perfectly polished blade casting her virtual reflection back to her. He could see it in the eyes of her icon that she knew she was logging off because he let her.

After a few seconds passed John brought himself wholly back to the real world. With a groan he peeled himself up off of the parking lot.

Tenebrous was still lying on the ground, her chest heaving as she breathed, and blood seeping from her nose and mouth. There was a look of shock among most of the Angels, and even Base-13 seemed mortified.

Feeling something wet on his face, John wiped himself with the back of his gloved hand. "Awe crap." he cussed when he saw his own blood.

"Here." Hunter said softly, handing him a clean cloth. He accepted it and pressed it against his nose to help stop the bleeding. He sat sidesaddle on his motorcycle while Hunter and Hoss tended to business. Billy just sat in the truck, pouting.

John could hear the sick soprano of one of the Angel's motorcycles driving off. Not too long after the bleeding had stopped. It was a little while later when Tenebrous finally sat up, and with a bit of help was able to regain her feet.

"She gonna be okay?" John asked one of the Angels.

"Yeah, I'll be fine." growled Tenebrous.

"Well sorry for caring." John snipped back.

A little while later an Angel came back, balancing a good sized cardboard box on his motorcycle behind him. It was secured with two bungee cords that wageslaves would use to tie down their luggage to the tops of their cars.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry." Tenebrous told John, speaking much more gently than earlier.

"Don't sweat it. I didn't go easy on ya." John told her.

Tenebrous seemed to smile just a little. "Just… Was wondering what you did there. At the end." she said.

"I, ah, uploaded a seeker code to the attack." John said, "Read about 'em somewhere, so I made my own."

"Not bad." she said softly, "You're not a bad kid. Call me sometime, okay?"

"Sure." John said, somewhat looking at Tenebrous and smiling just a little as she walked off. She had to be a few years older than him at least. Then he noticed the contact request from her on his commlink, and he accepted it.

"Saddle up, we're moving out!" Hunter called out.

"Where to next?" John asked as he started up his motorcycle. The Katana-11's engine rumbled a strong tenor compared to the rice burner engines of the Aurora Angel's motorcycles.

"Terry's place." Hunter said as she secured her helmet on. "We need to get Carole out of there."

"So we're helping Terry escape?" asked Billy in a rather whiny tone. "You're gonna pay me my share if the Don doesn't."

"Fuck you." Hunter and John said in unison. John smiled.

It was extremely late when they got back to Terry's home. Lights were still on behind drawn curtains, and a yard light now burned for Terry's arrival. Even the European sedan was easy to spot, it's shiny paintjob reflecting the light to even the dullest of eyes. This, of course, meant that Billy could walk right into it before realizing it really was there.

Hunter set herself up as the center of a private network between everyone except Terry. To try and make sure he was going to be safe he was going to hide in the back seat of Hoss's truck with the windows blackened to the outside.

Things were also a little different. A man John had not seen before was sitting on the front porch, though it seemed he was enjoying the warm evening breeze more than he was looking out for trouble.

"Can you send that drone out again?" Hunter asked. "Wanna make sure it's just the one in there with Carole or if there's any shestiorka with her."

"Who?" John asked.

"Bottom level Vory grunts. Like the guy at the door." Hunter told him.

"Oh, okay. Easy." John said, pulling Laserbeak back out. It was almost impossible to see this time in the darkness of night, but even still the drone zipped incredibly close to the ground. Without John's prompting it took a course around the shestiorka.

Using the thermographic feature of its camera, Laserbeak was able to easily identify two people in the living room. The walls, however, proved to be a little difficult to try and see through. With its laser microphone he was able to listen to a whole lot of nothing through the glass window.

"Got at least two inside for sure, but I can't get a good angle to look around." John silently sent to everyone.

"Don't forget to check 'round back." Hunter advised.

John told Laserbeak to sneak around the house once, sweeping everything with its camera.

"What about their car?" Hoss asked.

"Lemme check." John said.

Finding the sedan's node was easy enough, as was forcing his way back through the firewall. The same trick actually seemed to work again, and this made John nervous. Running two fingers over his right ear he scoped out the interior of the car's node before moving on to anything else. When he found no traps or such lurking in the digital shadows, he moved on to trying to inspect the rest of the car. By the pressure sensors in the seats, which were largely intended to tell the car whether or not it should fire its airbags in the event of an accident, John was able to tell there were two people in the front seat.

"Got two in the sedan." John told the others.

"Go! Go! Go!" Hunter yelled.

Looking more to the real world, John could see Hunter, Hoss, and Billy rushing for the house and not a clue why.

Well, not right away when the seat sensors told John the two in the car were on the move. At the speed of thought he told the car to lock all of the doors. While he and the shestiorka in the car played a back and forth game of lock/unlock, John quickly compiled a machine sprite. The floating skull had two camera eyes, an array of various tools hanging around where the jaw would have been, and a trio of mechadendrite cables dangling from the back. He ordered it into the car with instructions to keep it shut down and the occupants inside no matter what.

"Shit." John cussed aloud, "Two more behind the house."

Instead of busing in through the front door with Hoss and Hunter, John saw Billy run off to the side. Seconds later he saw Billy slice his way into the two shestiorka in the back, both of whom apparently were having troubles with the back porch door.

John went back to check on the car, which the sprite had began a game of stop and go with the car's passengers and it's engine.

"We've got Carole secured." Hunter told John. "What about their car?"

"Got an agent fuckin' with 'em." he said. "They ain't goin' anywhere."

"Go ahead and bring him in." Hunter told him.

While keeping watch on the sedan, John opened a door to Hoss's truck and told Terry to come with him inside. From there John followed Terry into his house. To give Laserbeak something to do, he told it about the European sedan and ordered it to disable it, starting with the tires.

The Russian, who was still alive and conscious as he sat against a chair and on the floor with his hands bound behind him, muttered something when he saw Terry and John walk in through a now broken door. The shestiorka that had been sitting out front was now laying in a crumpled heap in the kitchen. Whether or not he was alive, John could only guess.

"Could you watch your mouth, please?" asked Hunter.

"What'd he say?" John asked.

"That we're worse than Georgians raised in a pig's trough." Hunter told him.

John took a few seconds to think about it, imagining a red neck farm in the CAS, with pigs in a muddy pen and a hick farmer dumping slop into a wooden trough.

Walking up to the Russian he asked, "Hey, you want kids?"

"What are you talkink about?" the Russian asked back in accented English.

"Guess not." John said. As hard as he could he slammed his foot up between the Russian's legs, the toe of his sneaker slamming right about where John thought his testicles were.

The Russian screamed in pain an octave higher than before.

"That wasn't all that nice." commented Hoss. He had a disappointing kind of look on his face as John looked up at the troll.

"You done?" asked Hunter.

"Yeah." John said.

They waited while the Wyatts gathered up what stuff they could, with Carole asking questions all the while. Well before they were done Laserbeak had reported it had punctured all four tires, melted the stuff in the doors, and even cut the drive train underneath the car. For a moment John had even considered having it cut the fuel line as well, but then thought the cutting laser might ignite the gasoline. He recalled the drone to him instead and dismissed the sprite.

Before they left, John saw Hunter sprits the Russian with the same little spray bottle he had used on Catherine a few weeks ago. His heart felt heavy the moment he thought of her.

"I still can't believe we're not getting any money from 'im." complained Billy as they and the Wyatts went their separate ways.

"Let's just get this job over with." Hunter said with a sigh.

John and Hunter lead the way this time as they made their way north back to Casquilho Imports.

There was no one waiting for them at the back door this time. Instead Hunter led them up to it and knocked on it herself. Despite the poor light John was able to catch sight of the Latino as he opened the door for them.

The Don was waiting for them behind the same desk, looking a bit tired from the late hour. John did have to admit that he could not wait to get paid and back home to sleep, even if sleep was in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor.

"I thought I asked you to bring me Terry Wyatt." the Don said, seeing that the smuggler was obviously not with them.

"We couldn't track him down." Hunter told him. "We think he's already skipped the Front Range."

"We did manage something else." Hoss said, setting the cardboard box down on the Don's desk with a heavy thud. "This here's the cargo he dumped."

"You sure it's all there?" the Don asked.

"Yes." Hunter said with stone conviction.

John glanced at Billy. The razorboy looked really super anxious about getting paid.

"Well then, I guess our business is concluded." the Don told them.

"The hell it is!" cried Billy.

To be honest, John did feel some sympathy.

"Really?" the Don asked. "I ask you to bring me a man and you don't. Why should I pay you?"

"How about as a favor for delivering you your BTLs?" Hunter asked.

John wondered what the big deal was over beetles. Then his tired mind remembered BTLs, Better-Than-Life chips that were like a digital drug for people, letting them experience things and were just as addictive as any chemical drug could be.

"Market value's about eighty grand in nuyen." Hunter continued, "The original nine thousand for Terry would be just fine."

"We coulda just sold 'em to someone else." John added, "Coulda made a ton more."

The Don did not look too pleased, but apparently could not find fault with their logic. "Alright then." he said, and their commlinks beeped. John was quick to accept the transfer of nine thousand nuyen, shuffling the money to the credstick discretely plugged into his goggles.

The Don and his bodyguards gave them no hassles as they left, and they went their own ways from there.

Feeling rather hungry, John stopped at a Nukit Burgers place at the intersection of Green Valley Ranch Boulevard and Tower Road to pick up some quick and cheap food. At the late hour the place was eerily calm and quiet. When John looked at the main door, he figured it was because the place was closed.

He was just about to turn back onto Tower Road to head home he heard a scream. Running the Katana-11 strictly on electrical power he drove off towards the source. What he found when he turned a corner into an alley shocked him.

With his keener than normal eyes John saw three people chasing a fourth. The three had gang markings for the Fronts while the fourth had no gang markings John could identify. He was about to just turn and leave when he saw lightning flash from the hands of one of the Fronts to strike his prey.

"You shouldn't've done that, bitch." John heard the magician say. For the first time he was actually glad of the earbuds he wore as they enhanced what might have been unheard.

"Yeah, we're gonna fuck you real good." another Front said, half growling, half purring.

"I'll handle her." the magician added, "She won't be able to do shit."

John's heart leapt into his throat, pounding furiously with an adrenal rush. With his right hand he drew his Ruger Super Warhawk, and in one fluid motion had it up and squeezed off a round at the Fronts. The gunshot thundered down the alley, and if the bullet had been a regular slug it would have torn into the magician's shoulder. Instead the slug was designed to fragment and explode violently, and bloody chunks of flesh and bone flew from his shoulder.

With a virtual hand on the accelerator, John floored it down the alley. He squeezed off a second round, missing the Fronts but creating a fireball of shrapnel in the bricks near their heads.

One of them was smart, the other not so much. John saw the later was an ork just as the Fronts member was about to clothesline him with an outstretched arm. At the last second John popped a wheelie and with a twist of the handlebars instead slammed his front tire into the ork. John's motorcycle came down heavily with the ork underneath, and no wasted power as the rear tire muscled itself over him.

With a squeal of metal on asphalt John spun around, stopping close to the zapped girl. "Get on!" John yelled as he holstered his revolver.

She was painfully slow to get up, but actually did climb on behind him on his motorcycle. Without being told to she put her arms around his stomach and held on tight.

John hit the accelerator hard, briefly making the rear wheel spin out before the Katana-11 jolted underneath him with its power. He intentionally ran over the ork a second time before bolting out across Green Valley Ranch Boulevard and going off road. He thought he heard the squeal of car tires, but did not look back to see if someone had nearly hit him. All that mattered was they did not.

After a brief but rough trip through a field John was back again on surface streets. When it looked like no one was pursuing them he started on his way for home again.

All the way she said nothing.

It took almost an hour to get home, partly because John did not take a direct rout. A touch of paranoia still stuck with him about the Fronts. All in all it seemed like he was jumping at shadows as nothing happened when they got there.

With his motorcycle able to park itself, John helped the girl inside. This was the first time he had gotten a really good look at her. She had short cut red hair, but not as boyishly short as Tenebrous had, and was wearing jeans, a simple brown tee shirt, and a light blue jacket that were all caked in mud and dust. She was also a bit shorter than John, and might have been a year younger than he figured he was.

"Where are we?" she asked softly as John lead her to his room.

"My place." John said, "You can stay the night here. Tomorrow we can figure stuff out."

"Okay." she said softly, and with John's help sat down on his sleeping bag.

"You got a name?" John asked.

He got no answer. She simply slumped over and fell asleep.

"Great." John muttered to himself.

It was going to be a long night.


	7. Run 07 : An Ounce Of Prevention

Run 07: An Ounce Of Prevention (based on the mission written by Darci Stratton)

From the brief memories John had of Denver he had found it was a great place to get just about whatever you wanted. As long as you had the cred, that was. And that was a problem whenever the cred ran out. Fortunately for John, the cred was far from gone. He had almost thirty thousand nuyen available. More importantly true now with a roommate who was nearly flat broke.

Now if only there was one thing that John could get his virtual hands on, and that was any new information on what had happened to Catherine just over three weeks ago. About as much as he could get was stuff he already knew, and Tabby was starting to get annoyed with his occasional asking. He was about to give up on his self appointed quest, figuring it would be easier to try and catch smoke with his bare hands.

But in getting back to more important matters at hand, John discovered it was a completely new adventure having a roommate. It also did not help much that this new roommate was a twelve year old girl.

She still had not told him anything about herself, even her name. She was, however, quite insistent in staying at his place. She ate very little, said nothing, and aside from when she needed to use the bathroom to relieve herself she never left the office room he had pretty much given her. Whenever John did see her, she always had a dull and listless look in her chocolate brown eyes. At least she had taken a room of her own once he had brought her a sleeping bag of her own to use. Beyond the occasional visit to the bathroom she spent all of her time in her room.

Regardless of how much time she spent there, John at least wore his sunglasses all the time now. He had no idea how she would react to his nearly solid blue-within-blue eyes, and thought it best she just see him with the glassy black shades instead.

Out of concern for her John had even hacked her commlink to see and listen in. Just as he had breached the firewall out she came and straight to the bathroom. After a few days he had learned her routine, though he was still concerned about her not eating anything.

Come Friday afternoon, though, John had to set aside his thoughts about his new roommate when his commlink chimed with an incoming call.

The first thing John noticed was the man's hair, a tame lion's mane of reddish-brown hair surrounding a man's smiling face. His eyes were a brilliant green, bright and friendly and matching a wide beaming grin. It almost looked like he had just found a long lost cousin or something, though John had no idea who he was.

"Yah, hi! Mah name's Izzy," the man said, introducing himself, "and I was told you might like a bit of work." His voice was an odd blend of energetic and relaxed at the same time.

"Tabby referred me to yah." Izzy continued, "If you'd like something a little less complicated than I understand you're used to, go to the Jantico Medical Clinic on Ward at fifty-eighth, in the PCC. Your appointment with 'Dr. Johnson.' is at six, but I'd suggest not eating dinner before you get there."

"Yeah, sure." John told him before hanging up.

As early as it was still, John rummaged around in the fridge for something to eat. He ended up going to the crate that held dry foods and prepared a beef flavored yaki-soy-ba bowl. He sighed as he ate it, the beef flavor was not quite as good as the burger he had eaten at the Aspen Chalet. Heck, even the food at Holm Elementary, still mass produced, had been better.

John's heart sank when he thought of the school, which made him think of Catherine. This also made the yaki-soy-ba bowl taste even worse, though he made himself eat it all.

The clinic was well over thirty kilometers, and two border crossings, away. At about 16.00 when John was about to leave, he knocked on his roommate's door.

"Hey, uh, I wanted to tell you I gotta go out for a job now." he said through a closed door. "I dunno how long I'll be gone. Might be a week."

John stepped back when the door began to open slowly. She was a few centimeters shorter than John, and just like the times before her brown eyes looked dull and listless. Still she managed to look up into the darkened lenses of his goggles.

"I'm plannin' on comin' back." he told her, "But just in case…" He slipped a credstick out of his pocket and handed it to her.

She looked down at the credstick for a moment as if she were contemplating the meaning of the small chip, then looked back up at John in wonderment.

"There's five thousand nuyen on it." he said. "You can use that to start yourself a new life in case I can't make it back."

Slowly her fingers curled around the credstick, then the door.

John turned away and headed over to his motorcycle. "At least she could've said 'thank you'." he muttered as he started the engine and cinched the straps of his new backpack.

Crossing from the UCAS sector to the CAS sector took longer than John expected, and he thought for a bit that he was actually going to get pulled aside. Just when he thought he was totally screwed he got waved on through.

The border crossing into the PCC sector later was no easier. This time John asked what was up, and while one guard gave John a 'fuck off' kind of glare, he did overhear from a soldier in a ZDF uniform about the increased sensitivity to the border chemical sniffers. John took this to mean they were checking deeper into his licenses to make sure it was legal for him to have the guns that he did.

Overall he got through without having his Katana-11 get torn apart.

The Jantico Medical clinic was almost easy to miss for John as he drove down Ward Road in the old Ute sector. The whole neighborhood looked like a gray area for real estate, too close to Arvada to be nice but too close to Wheat Ridge to be really crappy. The street number was silkscreened in silver on a dark gray canvas awning wide enough to shelter the whole sidewalk, printed in Arabic, English and half a dozen more languages John could only guess at. The storefront looked more like a tattoo parlor. If it were not for the large block letters painted on the glass declaring the name of the place, John would have figured he had the wrong place.

After parking his motorcycle somewhere safe John walked right on in through the front door. What he found was the waiting room of a street doc, a ten meter by ten meter waiting room with several rows of chairs. Among the various patients waiting inside John saw Valkyrie and Morph. The air inside had an odd mix of hospital sterile and stuffy stale.

At least there were a few trideo screens with different programming on each screen. John mentally tapped one to get the audio. "Police still have no leads on the ambush of several shipments coming out of Rocky Mountain Dynamics several weeks ago, that are believed to have been perpetrated by local 'go-gangers.' They have noted that the incidents appear to have stopped as abruptly as they began, and while they are pleased they fear this means the spree will remain unsolved."

"So what do we know?" John asked Valkyrie.

"Not a clue." Valkyrie said, "We've gotta wait till we're all here first, or so sayeth the receptionist."

"Does she even have a clue?" John asked.

"We're waiting on one more." Valkyrie said, "Just don't know who."

"I am right 'ere!" came an energetic and tiny voice from above John. She spoke in an accented English that John could not identify.

Looking up John saw what might have been the weirdest sight he had seen since first woke up and saw Tabby's feline features if he had not already seen and met a pixie. Floating straight above him was an elf in miniature, maybe half a meter tall if she stretched, lying as if she were on an invisible bed above his head and looking down at him. She had bright purple hair woven in a French braid with the end looped back to her head that still reached past her shoulders. She wore a darker purple, high cut short sleeved shirt and short matching skirt over what looked like a black body suit. Four iridescent wings like those of a dragonfly fluttered lazily from her back, casting a slightly purple tint as the light passed through them.

"Hope you can cut the games for a while, Whisperwind." Valkyrie said.

"Awe, but he iz cute." complained the pixie.

Valkyrie gave the purple pixie a stern look.

"Yeah, yeah." Whisperwind relented.

With a creak of her chair Valkyrie stood and waved at Morph. He followed Valkyrie up to the receptionist's desk.

"Hi, we've got an appointment with Dr. Johnson." Morph said.

"Are you four?" the receptionist asked in a tired voice without even looking up. She looked like the kind of woman who had seen it all, had gotten the t-shirt, and would not easily take shit from anyone.

"Well I ain't gonna get counted as a half." John piped up.

"Well, you are half sized, are you not?" Whisperwind asked.

John looked up to see the purple pixie still floating above his head. "Well, if I'm half then you're a tenth." he said.

Whisperwind responded by sticking her tongue out at John.

"If you'll come with me." the receptionist said, standing and showed them through a door in the back and led them to a small locker and changing room. It felt even smaller with Valkyrie there.

"Pick a locker and put all of your weapons in it." the receptionist said, not looking at them as she pulled sea foam green things from another bin.

It was a bit of a pain, but John did slip his spring loaded holsters off with his holdout pistols off and put them in a low set locker. He also deposited his Warhawk and Hatamoto pistols.

"Got enough gunz?" Whisperwind asked.

"Nope." John answered without looking as he pulled out his two Predators and added them to the collection.

"Here, put these on." the receptionist told them, handing everyone a sea foam green smock with a mask and cap to cover their hair.

John took what was offered to him. They were sized for a dwarf, and ended up being too large around the middle, too short in the arms and legs, and the cap was a bit loose even after getting pulled a bit over his goggles. At least the receptionist was okay with him leaving those on.

The receptionist then led them to an operating room, where a doctor in similar sea foam green garb was operating on a patient. A nurse was at the other side of the operating table assisting him. There the receptionist left them.

"I'm sorry about the arrangement, but this patient just came in and couldn't wait." the doctor told them, briefly looking up at them to notice. "Don't worry, he's completely sedated. You can call me Dr. Johnson."

Dr. Johnson was shorter than the others, except for John. All that could be seen at the moment were his eyes, darkest brown and set close together. His nose, hidden behind the surgical mask, was not noticeably large.

"So what do you need us for?" Morph asked.

"A simple job." the doctor said.

"Please don't say it's easy." John said.

Dr. Johnson chuckled. "I need a supply of a new drug." he told them, "It's used before or during a surgery to keep a patient from going into shock. Quite simply it saves lives."

This did not sound too hard or bad to John. That was until he thought about what it might entail to actually getting this drug in the first place.

"Why not just order some of it?" asked Whisperwind.

"I, ah, I'm not licensed for it. It's for political reasons, nothing malpractice related." Dr. Johnson told them. "I'll be able to pay you for your services. Five thousand each once you manage to bring me in four cases worth. That's forty one hundred milliliter vials."

"I'm in." Morph said.

"Me too." John added quickly.

"Sure." Valkyrie added.

"Ooo! Sounds like fun." chipped in Whisperwind.

"I think we're done here, if you can close please?" Dr. Johnson asked the nurse.

"Yes Doctor." the nurse said.

"If you'll come with me I'll give you the details." Dr. Johnson said as he led them out of the operating room, stopping in the locker room to strip off his smock and other surgical garb. John and the others did the same, and John made sure to grab his pistols before they moved on. Without the surgical garb John could see the doctor had curly black hair with a slight dusting of 'salt' at the temples. There was also some kind of fatigue now in his eyes, a tired look of a man pushing himself quite hard.

The doctor led them out through another door and into a narrow hallway. Along one was a collection of wire mesh baskets holding various cybernetic replacement parts, arms, legs, and the sort. Also along this wall were a number of organ transplant coolers. The inventory was being managed by a thin, gray haired man wearing what John would describe as brown, old man pants and a matching coat. The man's hair was braided and looked like it had been slept in, and he wore a shapeless fedora. John did not notice the guys eyes, but did spot what he might have called a beak instead of a nose on the man.

The man said nothing as they walked by and into a tiny conference room that felt like might burst with Valkyrie and the ork in there with them.

"Insolite." John heard Whisperwind say softly.

"Now, the details I expect you'll need." Dr. Johnson said once they were all in the conference room.

"Of course. Like what's the name of the drug and where we can procure a supply." Morph said.

"Oui." said Whisperwind.

"The drug is called cryosec." Dr. Johnson said, "I only know one place that'll have a supply, and that's the DocWagon facility in the PCC sector."

"That's on Belleview Avenue, right?" Morph asked.

"Twenty-eight twenty-one west, right." Dr. Johnson said.

"You're absolutely sure it's the only place?" Morph asked, "I mean, we're talking about a hospital that'll send armed paramedics to places the cops won't go, just to save one life."

"Absolutely. You might get lucky somewhere else and maybe get half a case at best." Dr. Johnson said.

"Guess we got our spot." John said.

"We should get going, then." Morph said.

John left his motorcycle in the back of Valkyrie's truck, but it was left in a public parking lot with a spirit of hers to guard it. Instead they took a silver Ford-Canada Bison that Morph said he was loaning from a friend. Somehow Whisperwind landed herself a seat on John's lap as they traveled. He figured it was so she could look out the passenger side window and watch the world go by as he rode shotgun to Morph.

It took well over an hour to cover the more than thirty kilometer drive from Dr. Johnson's clinic to the DocWagon facility. During that time John dug into the matrix for anything he could find on the drug cryosec. What he found was a bit surprising.

The value of the drug on the street was around five hundred nuyen per hundred milliliter vial, it was four months into a limited one year trial release, and it was apparently in such high demand that production could not keep up with the demand. This he told the others.

The DocWagon hospital virtually took up a square city block. The block was easily marked off by a five meter high concrete wall that looked like it had been etched and painted to actually look like old stone. The front and rear entrances were wide, both looking like they were built to accept a lot of traffic.

Inside the wall, which was easy to see, was a well manicured lawn, with occasional flowers and shrubs. By the main entrance was a parking lot for visitors, and four benches surrounding a weathered bronze statue of a guy holding a short staff with two snakes twisted around it. Morph said it was Mercury holding a caduceus.

The hospital itself was split into three separate buildings, two smaller buildings flanking a third to make a right angle 'V'. The buildings themselves were colored the same as the walls, and unremarkably shaped like giant blocks.

The whole complex was also well guarded, with at least six guards along the perimeter at some point.

There were also a few Stuffer Shacks and other small stores along the facing streets, and Morph pulled into the parking lot of one Stuffer Shack where they could see the DocWagon hospital. With a few other RVs and other traffic there they blended right in.

"So how are we going to get in?" Whisperwind asked, after they had a chance to look the place over for all of five minutes.

"Stakeouts take a while." Morph said. "A few hours at least."

"Your friend certainly has the right ride for this." commented Valkyrie as she stretched out on one of the bench seats in the back of the RV.

"What're you gonna do?" John asked.

"Astral recon." Valkyrie said, "Gonna pop out for a while."

"Guess I'll do my thing, then." John said, getting up from his seat.

"What iz that?" Whisperwind asked.

"Gonna peep on their computers." John answered as he took a comfy looking reclining chair for himself.

Finding the DocWagon node was not all that difficult. After only two hours he found himself a large hole in DocWagon's firewall and had full access to their network.

The hospital's node sculpting was exaggerated, with reflective floors so shiny they looked clean enough to eat off of and walls so blindingly white John thought his eyeballs would burst into flames if they were really looking at them.

The interior looked like it was also laid out like a hospital, complete with various floors full of beds. There were only elevators to use to change floors, and after a while of exploring about John noticed there were gaps in the floor plan. He could access a patient's medical file, assuming there was a patient in the bed, and found that he had no access to anything security related.

Leaving a connection to DocWagon, John pulled himself from virtual reality. He groaned as he sat up.

"In already?" Morph asked.

"Yeah. Got the run of the place. Been looking at medical records." John said.

"Not bad."

"As long as you don't mind no security access." John added, "Security network's a stand alone."

"So you can't hack it?" Morph asked.

John dug into one of his pockets and pulled out his yokujin drone. "If Laserbeak can get close, it'll let me get in." he said.

"Wow, neat." cooed Whisperwind as she hovered near the tiny drone.

"Should be able to get past the spirits floating about." Valkyrie told him. "Saw a bird fly through and they didn't react to it."

"Looks like if you send it in high enough you should be able to get it there." Morph added. "Hopefully that thing's quiet enough the guards won't hear it."

John sent the drone off, riding piggyback inside it as it flew. He figured he would let it fly more on its own, and just point it to a target. With the software he had installed it could do a better job of sneaking up on the hospital than John could if he flew it himself.

Laserbeak circled carefully along the wall, stopping once to hide when a patrolling guard started to come close. Once the guard had moved on, without stopping, the little drone took off again.

"You sure you're flying it right?" Morph asked.

"It's programmed for covert ops kind of shit." John said, "And it's got a chameleon skin to blend in."

"How much did it set you back?" Valkyrie asked.

"'Bout ten grand." John lied. Besides the drone having been almost half priced he had hacked himself the extra software it now ran.

It was when John saw an open garage door at the back of one of the smaller buildings that he prodded his drone to fly inside. Laserbeak did so, by getting as close to the building as it could along the perimeter wall, then flitting down to the lawn and zipping nape-of-the-Earth style to the corner of the building. From there it moved ever so slowly to the open door, darting around to the inside and into a shadowy spot next to the garage door's guiding rail. There it waited.

Carefully looking around, John spied several security cameras. The closest one happened to be straight above Laserbeak. He sent it an order to jack into the camera and hide there. Looking about through its camera, listening through its microphone, and just feeling the WiFi through it, John figured it had slipped in completely undetected.

"Got in." John told them.

"Got ze security already?" Whisperwind asked.

"He means the drone." Morph said.

"Oh."

"Just gimme a few hours." John said, yawning.

"Can you wait like ten minutes?" Morph asked.

"Yeah, sure."

A few minutes after Morph left he was back with half liter fountain drink. "Drink this." he said, handing it to John.

John took a good swig. "Just buzz cola." he said, but he continued drinking anyway. Maybe it was the caffeine but John was already starting to feel more energized.

"Feel like you could go a few more hours to break in?" Morph asked.

"Yeah!" John answered excitedly as he finished the soda, punctuating it with a loud belch.

"Nice one!" exclaimed Whisperwind.

John grinned as he lied back down and shifted into virtual reality. With his wireless connection to Laserbeak he was able to hack into a different node, and in about three hours had broken into the security node for DocWagon's hospital across the street. He knew for sure it was the security node as he had access to a multitude of security cameras placed strategically all over the place, as well as almost all of the door locks.

Keeping his virtual hands in both nodes, John pushed himself back to the real world. Before he sat up he realized there was extra weight on his chest. Looking down he saw Whisperwind laying on his chest, curled up like a cat and sleeping. Then he also noticed that he was in the very back of the Bison, in the master bedroom.

"Um, excuse me?" he said softly.

Whisperwind was slow to sit up, yawning as she stretched. If it were not for her body suit he figured he would have gotten a good look down the front of her shirt.

"You took too long." Whisperwind said sleepily.

"Yeah, but why're you using me for a bed?" John asked.

"Because you are nice and warm." she said as she gently took flight to hover above John.

Looking around, John saw that Morph and Valkyrie were both gone.

"They went to get food." Whisperwind said. "They should be back soon."

"And why am I back here?" he asked.

"She thought you 'ould be more comfy." Whisperwind said, looking more awake and chipper. "I only came 'ere because I grew tired of games."

John sat up. "Gotta take care of something." he said. "Toilet works, right?"

"Oui." Whisperwind called as John walked into the cramped bathroom.

Just as John had stepped back out, the side door opened up.

"Ah, Cypher, you're up." Morph said as he stepped into the RV. Valkyrie was right behind him. "Have you told him yet?" he asked.

"Told me what?" John asked.

"Non. He jumped right for the toilet." Whisperwind said.

"Here, chow down on this." Morph said, handing John a Stuffer Shack sack filled with various foodstuffs.

"We figure you dig up the records of some patient one of us could pass off as a family member, and we walk right on in." Morph said.

John started checking medical files on his left and the hospital's cameras on the right. Finding no cameras he could use to see patients he focused on medical records. There were not many patients that had been recently admitted in the last hour. Then he found one that looked like might just be the best. With a virtual hand he pulled a copy of the guy's picture out of DocWagon's node and held it up as an ARO that everyone could see.

"He's just comin' outta surgery." John said.

Morph took a good look at the picture. "What's he got on record for family?" he asked.

"Unknown." John read from the medical file. Looking back at Morph he saw what he thought was impossible.

Morph was plying his own face like it was clay in his hands. Eyes lost their distinct almond shape shared by most elves, his ears were rounded down, and his cheek bones softened even more to look human. After about a minute or two of working his face he looked like he could pass himself off as a brother.

"Sorry I can't help you two out." Morph said. "Especially you, kiddo."

"Don't sweat it as long as you can fast talk us in." Valkyrie said.

"What'da'ya mean?" John asked.

"Your choice of eye ware." Morph said. "Kinda out of sorts."

"Fine, fine." John said, "But it's my good commlink built into it." He made some gestures like he was changing connections to the commlink he wore at his left wrist.

"And the guns, too. It's either that, or sit in here while we go in." Morph said.

John pulled his black sunglasses out of his backpack before swapping his goggles for them, keeping his near solid blue eyes closed when he did. "Better?" he asked Morph.

"Your guns?" Morph asked sternly.

"Fine." John said, pulling his four heavy pistols out of their holsters. "I'm keepin' the holdouts. They're loaded with shock rounds."

"Fine. Well then, I'll spin us around a bit before we try to walk in." Morph said, not giving John a direct answer. "Get a little ways away, get us a new paint job, and we'll pull in for a visit."

"New paint job?" Whisperwind asked.

"When we're out of sight of the hospital I'll just program a new color. This's built with a camo coating" Morph told them.

John was just glad that he never lost his connection to either of DocWagon's nodes while they drove around, though at times it felt like he was about to lose their signals. Then Morph brought them around and pulled right up to the front gate where he was stopped by two guards.

"Visiting hours are…" one of the guards started.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Morph butted in, "Listen, it's been a ten hour drive, customs was a bitch, and when I finally get here I find my brother's been hurt and was brought here."

"I understand that…" the guard started to say.

"C'mon, what if it were your brother in there?" Morph asked, "Ray Collins. I ain't seen 'im in five years. C'mon, won't take long and we'll be quiet."

Apparently the guard relented as there was a request to attach a new ARO to John's commlink. "Gotta accept them. Visitor's pass. Be out by the expiration time." the guard said.

John touched the accept button on his commlink.

"Thanks a bunch." Morph said, pulling the RV around through the open gate.

"Where's Whisperwind?" John asked.

"Right 'ere." piped up the pixie.

"Pixies are great at hiding." Valkyrie said.

"Commlink iz off." Whisperwind said. "I 'ill hide in yoor backpack. Just be careful, ookay? I do not want break my wings."

John was careful, but tried to act like he was not being careful, as he slung his backpack over his left shoulder before climbing out of the now black RV. He was right behind Valkyrie, who did not have to duck as they walked through the front doors.

The inside was mostly white, brightly lit, and stank of bleach. Behind the granite-veneer front desk was a troll woman. She had dark red hair with a pair of smooth, ivory horns gracefully reaching up from above her temples. Her dark green eyes gave them a critical look as Morph led the way up to her.

"Hi, we're here to see Ray Collins." Morph said

Getting closer, John could see she had a nametag on. 'Madge' it said.

Madge's eyes darted about, both between John and the others and AROs John could see because of his hacked access of DocWagon's network.

"He's in room six-oh-six." Madge said, her voice sounding like a mother whom you would not dare ignore. "There's elevators just off to the side, on the left." She pointed off to their right, and John could see the recessed elevator doors.

"Great, thanks." Morph said.

John rushed over to the elevators to hit the 'up' call button. He was also the first inside and right at the controls once the doors opened.

"Hit floor six." Morph said softly.

"Storage's on three." John told him.

"Just his six." Morph insisted.

"Okay." John said.

They went to the sixth floor, and Morph led them to room 606 as Madge had told them. He then pulled out three tiny grains of rice.

"Can you transfer our visitor AROs to these tags?" Morph asked.

"I need my goggles…" John started to say. He felt Whisperwind shifting around in his backpack.

"Here." Whisperwind said, pulling his goggles out.

John was quick to switch out for his goggles again. "Gimme your AROs, and I can." he said.

One at a time John moved their visitor pass AROs to each of the RFID tags Morph had given them. Morph then carefully peeked into Ray Collins's room, and John could see in the security node their tags inside the room. He then also made sure the security node reported that their commlinks were also there and not out in the hallway.

"Now let's get to the third floor." Morph said.

"This way." John said, leading them to a stairwell. Inside the security node he took a five second stretch if camera footage and set it on a repeating loop for all to see, and spoofed a janitorial RFID to open the door without setting off an alarm, and editing out the notice of that door opening from the security node's records. From there it was three flights down.

"What about the cameras?" Morph asked as they passed the door to the fifth floor.

"Already editing them." John told them.

The doors to the third floor opened at the end of a hallway, and it double backed towards their right. Not far beyond that, according to the map John had of the place, was the door to the medical storage.

There was also a strange feel about the place now. It was something John could not quite describe.

"Something going on?" Morph absently asked as he stepped into the hallway.

"I 'ill go and look." Whisperwind said, flying off down the hallway.

The door to the medical storeroom was built like a banker's door. There was a window in the top half, and right below that was a slide drawer where small objects could be passed through without actually opening the door.

John walked up to the storeroom door, keeping clear of being seen through the window, and found out that even this door was not connected to the security node. "Shit, I can't open it."

"Let me at it." Morph said, pulling out a toolkit as he started to go to work on the door's maglock.

There suddenly was a noise like someone had dropped a sack of soybeans. John and Morph looked at each other. There was then a second thump that made John's heart leap into his throat.

"Couple of nurses are taking a nap." they heard Valkyrie say softly.

"Whew." Morph said as he went back to work on the lock.

"Hurry, hurry!" Whsiperwind said excitedly, "Security guards all over this floor!"

"Got it!" Morph said as the lock released and they rushed inside.

At least John had access to the security cameras inside. Instead of a footage loop he edited everyone out of the picture and deleted the record of the nurses' RFID tags from the system so they no longer showed up.

Looking up and down the aisles John saw a plethora of various drugs. Many of which John recognized, though he could not recall having read any medical textbooks. He did not let that bother him, nor the temptation to take many of the various vials and bottles of drugs he knew he could sell for a lot of nuyen after checking their names on the matrix.

"Just how much cryosec should we take?" Valkyrie asked.

"Why not all of it?" Morph asked back with a grunt.

With his backpack loaded with dozens of vials, John went down the aisle to where Valkyrie and Morph were, and the web work of signals felt like he was walking through cobwebs. Then he noticed the case Morph was holding had several threads of data crisscrossing it.

"Leave the boxes, they're tagged. Just take the bottles." John told them.

"We got like a hundred vials. How're we gonna carry 'em all?" Morph asked.

Valkyrie had the answer. "Here." she said, handing Morph and John a garbage sack. She held one herself.

John counted one hundred and twenty seven total vials, which were split somewhat evenly between the three of them based on their size. John's was loaded up first with thirty vials, the equivalent of three cases. It felt rather heavy over his shoulder in addition to what he had stashed in his backpack.

"See to our exit." Morph said, "We'll wanna make as quick an exit as possible."

"Okay." John said. Having noticed another door at the other side of the storeroom, John went there. He was glad he did as he noticed a set of elevators just across the hall.

Wondering how the nurses, now propped out of the way in a corner, could get in and out, John started looking about the counter space and wall.

Hanging on a hook well away from the door was a key that John could barely feel amid the mess of signals. He also noticed a chip in a protective case that said "Confidential" on it. Curiosity got the better of him and he pocketed the chip.

"We got it all." Morph said, "How's our escape route?"

"Got something." John said, studying the key's signal. It was easy enough to get its ID code, and John transmitted it to the door. Along with the door thinking John had permission to enter, the lock clicked open.

Luck was with them as an elevator was at their floor already. Morph went first and held the door for them.

Valkyrie went second, doing her best to be stealthy as she almost clipped one of her curled horns on the elevator's door frame.

John darted out next, and a door busted open just as he did. Expecting to have to run from a doctor or security he was surprised when he nearly got bowled over by a bald man wearing an orange prison uniform.

"Ah! You're comin' wit' me!" the escaped prisoner declared.

"Fuck you!" John returned. With a twitch of his free arm the holdout was thrown into his hand. Before the prisoner could even blink John shot him.

"Hold it!" John heard another man yell. Instead he ran for the elevator.

The elevator doors closed just behind him, and right away started going down.

"Just what the hell was going on?" Morph asked.

"Fuck me, I dunno." John said.

"Bunch o' guys wearing 'Lakewood Correctional' on 'em." Whisperwind said, panting.

"Wonder if there was a riot?" mused Morph.

"So we just walkin' out like this?" John asked.

"Got it covered." Valkyrie said, just as the elevator doors opened at the ground floor.

Whatever it was Valkyrie had done apparently worked. Though they had to walk carefully, they were able to make their way around two operating tables and their tending doctors on their way out, and no one even seemed to notice they were there. They passed the first elevators they went up in, and then Madge at the front desk without the red haired troll even looking up as the front doors slid open.

Not even anything in the security node seemed to be out of place as John undid his editing of the security, including burning his janitorial pass from the locks.

"I cannot believe we 'ave done it!" cried Whisperwind when Valkyrie had closed the RV's sliding door behind her.

"Can ya circle us around the side?" John asked, "I wanna call back Laserbeak."

"Just wait till we're clear of the gate." Morph said.

After pulling himself out of the DocWagon nodes, John told Laserbeak to disconnect itself from the camera, but stay hidden.

"Everything okay?" the same guard at the gate asked Morph as they pulled up.

"Yup, thanks for letting us in." Morph said.

Everything seemed just fine as the guard let them pass. After turning a corner John sent a 'come home' command to Laserbeak. Thankfully Morph drove slow enough to let the tiny drone catch them, flying smoothly through the open passenger window.

"I think we can say we've done it, now." Morph told them, looking much more relaxed as the DocWagon hospital disappeared from view.

John wasted no time in grabbing his pistols and holstering them.

Things were going quite well until they pulled up back in the parking garage where they had gotten the RV in the first place.

"We 'ave visitors." Whisperwind said just as John was about to climb into Valkyrie's truck.

The visitors were three humans wearing matching black suits and black wraparound shades, much like the pair John had.

"Can we help?" Morph asked.

"Just wondering what you're up to." the lead man in black said. "What you're dealings are with the good doctor."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." Morph said.

"I'm talking about your business dealings with Doctor Samuel Perettico." the man said.

It felt like waterfalls were about to erupt from John's armpits.

"Oh, him!" Morph said, sounding oddly relieved. "He needed supplies, so we're doing a run for him."

"A run?" the man asked.

"Yeah. You know, gloves, masks, paper towels, that sort of stuff." Morph said. "Brought my nephew along to help, teach him some stuff about honest work."

"That's all?" the man asked, "Not making any deliveries from his clinic."

John found that to be a rather odd question to ask.

"Weird. No. No, nothing at all." Morph said like he found it as odd as John did.

The lead man in black looked at the other two. John could not feel any signals between the three of them, and he really did not like that one bit.

"Thanks, that's all." the man said. And with that the three turned and left.

"What was that all about?" asked Valkyrie.

"Not a clue." Morph said. "And I really don't wanna wait to find out."

A short drive later they were back at the Jantico Clinic. Grabbing his sack John followed the others into the clinic. John saw the gray haired man wheeling out a handcart laden with red and white coolers as they walked up. Something about that seemed odd to him.

The waiting room was thankfully empty, and the receptionist ushered them straight away into the conference room. Along the way John noticed that the hallway with all the coolers was now empty of those coolers.

Dr. Johnson was in shortly, looking extra haggard in the late hour.

"Here's the stuff you asked for." Morph said, hefting his garbage sack of cryosec and setting it on the table. John and Valkyrie did the same.

Dr. Johnson's eyes went wide. "Just how much did you manage to get?" he asked.

"Twelve cases worth, and seven extra full vials." Morph said as Dr. Johnson picked up one vial to examine it.

"Yes, yes, this'll be perfect." Dr. Johnson said after carefully reading the fine print on the label. "Our trauma survival rate was good before, but I believe it just improved an order of magnitude thanks to this. Now if you'll pardon me I need to get your payment."

John noticed Whisperwind sitting on the table, her wings slumped down. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I do not feel I did much." she said gloomily, her accent growing a little thicker.

"The hell you did." Morph said, "You made a great lookout for us in the hospital."

"Really?" Whisperwind asked.

"Certainly." Morph said.

John was not all too certain what all she did, but at least having a lookout seemed like it was always handy. At least, as long as the lookout actually spotted the danger, which he thought the pixie did well enough.

"Yeah, I think so." John added.

This seemed to perk the pixie up. "Bien." she said, hovering again.

"You really think I don't see what you're doing?" they all heard a male voice say.

"I don't' care what you see. It doesn't change anything as far as our arrangement is concerned." Dr. Johnson said.

Morph held a single finger to his lips. John made sure to keep his mouth shut.

"It doesn't? Looks to me like you're trying to give us less." the voice said.

"I'm not trying to give you less. I'm making damn sure I won't ever give you more." Dr. Johnson declared.

"You think this is going to slow us down?" We see how you're growing. You need us." the voice said.

"There's this thing called ethics, Argyle. Maybe you've heard of it? Well I still have it, and I'm not taking things that aren't mine just because you want them." Dr. Johnson said.

Behind his goggles John blinked. Ethics? The doctor was buying stolen goods. How ethical was that?

"We'll see about that. We're the only ones that can front you the cash this place needs. Sooner or later you will beg us for more help, and then you'll give us everything we ask for." Argyle said.

"Goodbye, Argyle." Dr. Johnson said rather loudly and sternly.

John could hear footsteps stomping off, then nothing. "What's that all about?" he asked.

"Tamanous?" Valkyrie asked.

"Probably." Morph said.

"I do not understand. Tamanous?" Whisperwind asked.

"They're a syndicate that specializes in organlegging." Morph said. "Dr. Johnson earns extra money on the side by selling body parts to them."

"Why?" John asked.

"Organ transplants, sometimes." Morph said, "Word is the body parts are sold for ghouls to eat."

John suddenly felt very sick.

"He sells body parts for food?" Whisperwind asked, her wings twitching in agitation. She also looked as pale as John felt.

"Ghouls are people too." Morph said matter-of-factly. "The good doctors will sell their usual bio waste. The bad ones, well, they do a lot worse."

"Sounds like this one's trying to stay on the level. To not cross that line." Valkyrie said.

"So we're not turning him in?" John asked.

"The more lives he saves, the less he has to sell to Tamanous." Morph said. "Probably what those guys in black were thinking."

Whisperwind gave her silent consent.

Dr. Johnson walked in a little bit later.

"Bad business dealings?" Morph asked.

"Something like that." Dr. Johnson said. "I won't be able to pay you full market value for all of the cryosec."

"Is fine. Just do not sell to those Tamanous pigs." Whisperwind told him.

"What?" Dr. Johnson asked.

"Just save more lives, okay?" Morph said.

Dr. Johnson was about to say something, but Valkyrie butted in. "We know. Don't explain anything." she said.

"Thank you." Dr. Johnson said with a noticeable sigh of relief.

John's commlink beeped with a transfer of five thousand from Dr. Johnson, which he accepted. Then it beeped again with another twenty-one hundred, seventy-five from Morph.

"We're getting an equal share of the bonus." Morph said.

"Fine with me." John said.

Whisperwind seemed to brighten even more, flitting over to John. "Merci." she said softly, kissing him on the cheek.

After collecting his motorcycle they all went their separate ways.

Two hours, and two coyote paths later John was home. He felt lucky to have avoided any law enforcement patrols as he drove up to the front door of home.

"I'm home!" John called out, not caring that it was after three a.m.

After getting off his Katana-11 and telling it to go park itself he headed for his bedroom. There he fell face first onto his sleeping bag, and his world went black.


	8. Run 08 : Chasing The Dragon

Run 08 : Chasing The Dragon (based on the mission written by Cliff Hensley)

The smell of rain prevailed through John's home, cooling it of the early spring heat. Somewhere there was a window that was stuck open, and it was the least of his concerns.

Though the room itself was probably colder than it should have been, John could not feel it. The bite of cold had no teeth against the fire that burned within as he swung his monofilament sword in a series of practice routines the tutorsoft showed him. Despite the deadliness of the super sharp blade as it sliced through the air, John only wore some loose pants and his goggles. His practice with the blade had started out simple enough as John followed the tutorsoft's instructions, but he had gone through the first lessons so quickly he figured he already knew something about how to handle a sword.

Sleep for John was becoming a luxury these last few days. With practically no word at all about what had happened to Catherine in almost a month, John had long since now given up in being able to do anything. Whether or not this was the reason for the nightmares he now suffered was immaterial. All he knew was that the nightmares had started bad right away, and steadily grown worse with each passing night as of late, leaving John with only a few hours of fitful sleep each night. That was if he was lucky. So far he had been lucky and not had to try and explain things to his roommate.

The girl seemed to be opening up a little. He still did not know her name, but did know she could cast spells. It was the only explanation he had after having slept for over a day after his last job, and waking up without feeling like he was starving to death. It also explained why she never ate anything.

Questions about her were the least of his concerns. Right now John tried to fight those dreams away in the early hours by pushing them aside, by diving into his sword practice. Try as he might he could not get any information as to why someone would want to kill Catherine, nor could he figure anything out on his own with what he knew. At this point the only option he had left was something he had never done before, and would need help in doing. That was seeking out another technomancer for aid in getting into the Resonance realms. Rumor had it there was an infinitely vast archive of data that held every byte of knowledge the matrix ever held since before Crash 1.0.

The beeping of his commlink was a welcomed distraction as Catherine's face momentarily fled from his thoughts. John sheathed his sword before answering the call. Information or work, either would be welcomed right now.

Lady Jade's face filled the screen of John's commlink and his heart and stomach felt like lead weights. She was also someone who had been avoiding his calls ever since.

"Hey chum." she said forlornly, "We need to talk. Meet me at Five By Five. Tonight, six o'clock. It's important."

"Yeah, sure." John answered half heartedly before ending the call.

Sighing, John walked over to his roommate's room door. Still being the strong silent type, she still had not said anything beyond the first night they had met. He knocked on the door.

She opened the door and froze like a deer in headlights.

"Hey, I, um, got work again." he told her. He pulled the same credstick from his goggles. She had given it back to John when he returned from his last job, but he never did transfer the funds back to his account.

"I just wanted to give you this." John said, handing her the credstick.

She made no move to take it.

John forcefully took her hand and slapped the credstick in it. This startled her and she looked more up at him, wide eyed and breathing hard.

"I got work to do." John said sternly. "It's just like last time."

She looked down at the chip in her hand, then back up at John. Then she bolted back into her room and slammed the door shut.

John sighed. With time to spare he took his time getting dressed and geared up for the trip to Five By Five, including his monofilament sword for the first time. At least he knew a faster way than going farther east than the Warrens just to find a route underground.

It was close to 18.00 when John stepped through the door into Five By Five.

"Don't know whachya doin' 'ere, kid," a big, burly looking ork said as he walked up to John, "but kids ain't allowed."

"Shut it, Bruno!" Matty called from behind the bar, "He's expected. Plus, if it weren't for the kid and his friends, you'd be out your booze."

"You shittin' me?" Bruno asked, turning back to look at the barkeeper. "This twerp?"

"Yeah!" Matty returned, "That twerp."

Several of the bar patrons were now turning to look at him, and suddenly John felt rather nervous.

"Having problems at the door, Cypher?" came a familiar voice. "You'd think they'd treat a local hero with a little more respect." remarked Hunter as she dropped a Predator IV and Ingram Smartgun X into the weapons box.

"Shit!" Bruno cussed, backpedaling from Hunter and falling onto his ass.

"Been a good boy, Bruno?" Hunter asked coyly. "Hope you've been keeping up with your P.O. Last I heard Dog's workin' Seattle, so I'm the one who gets to haul your ass in to the Star."

Bruno said nothing as he scrambled back to his feet and nervously made his way back to the bar. He nervously watched them from between two barstools.

"She's waitin' for ya round back." Matty told them, pointing towards the kitchen.

After leaving all six handguns and his sword in the crate, John followed Hunter around behind the bar and into the kitchen. Inside the kitchen was a hanging burlap sheet hanging from the ceiling that sectioned off part of the kitchen. Seeing Hunter walk back there, John followed.

Lady Jade was already there, along with Billy and Valkyrie.

Lady Jade downed a shot of some brownish liquid, and judging by the half full bottle she had been at it for some time already. The glass hit sharply as she brought it down hard on the table. "I'll keep this brief." she said, "A child is dead. The killer is still on the loose. No one knows who that killer was, or what his motive may be. The authorities are useless. I want you to hit the streets and use any means necessary to determine the killer's identity. Locate him, apprehend him, and deliver him to me alive. He's no good to me dead. I'll pay you each eleven thousand, with ten percent upfront."

"So Lone Star's dropped the ball." Hunter said coolly. "I'm in."

"Like you'd even have to ask me." John said darkly.

"I'm just wonderin' why you don't want us to geek the guy." Hunter said.

"Likely to make sure he or she knows why he will die." Valkyrie said in a tone that sent a shiver down John's spine.

"Eleven thousand each?" Billy asked, "Not just gonna give us a lump like last time?"

Behind his goggles John scowled. "Could just make you think you got paid." he said.

"Alright." Billy relented. John was surprised by the ease of it all, but this did not ease his mood any.

"Good." added Valkyrie.

After forwarding everyone their eleven hundred nuyen, Lady Jade looked everyone. "Any questions?" she asked, looking at Mina in particular.

"I've got one." Hunter said, "The second team, you hired them as well?"

"Yes." Lady Jade answered.

"Any idea who did it?" Billy asked.

"None." Lady Jade answered, standing up.

"C'mon! Fuck!" cried Billy, "You gotta know something!"

Lady Jade said nothing as she silently worked her way out of the room.

"Guess that's it for questions, then." Valkyrie said as she carefully stood to leave.

John followed the others back out to the bar. He did not see Bruno anywhere, and figured he had left. While Billy just walked right on out the door, Hunter and Valkyrie stopped to try and talk with some of the patrons. John opted to climb onto the same barstool he sat on the last time he was actually inside the bar.

"Bad day?" Matty asked.

"Yeah." John muttered. He heard the rush of a pressure hose, and turning to look saw Matty filling up a tall glass with soda.

"You remember that girl that got killed in the Warrens last month?" John asked, turning to face Matty.

"Maybe." Matty said, tapping a finger on the bar.

John wondered why Matty was so quiet. It took him a while to figure out that he was actually expecting payment. At least Lady Jade had given them all some starting cash. It was almost odd that Matty tapped his finger five times, stopped, and tapped five times again. He slid five hundred nuyen to a credstick and slid it towards Matty on the bar.

Matty was discrete in slotting the credstick and sliding it back to John.

"Well, I'm sure you know it was a sniper that shot her." Matty said.

"Yeah, think it was in the news." John told him.

"You do know she was half Yakuza, right?" asked Matty.

"She what?" John asked back before taking a long drink of his soda.

"Half yakuza." Matty repeated. "Her daddy ran with a guy named Kazuya Hotomi."

"What's her dad's name?" John asked.

"Dunno. He was called 'The Dragon' in the shadows." Matty told him, "Considering a dad like him, whoever geeked her's a dead chummer walking, the poor slot."

"C'mon, Cypher!" John heard Hunter call.

"What's up?" John asked, turning to look.

"We got a lead! Get a move on!"

Hunter had parked her motorcycle outside next to John's, though they had to walk them with the others to a surface exit in the CAS sector. It was much easier than John expected to get their motorcycles out of the tunnel and into the bottom floor of a parking garage.

It was almost a quiet drive as they headed south west into the CAS sector, with the only noise being Billy's unintelligent rambling. John really wished the razorboy had a cybernetic skull so he could hack it and have him shut up.

Valkyrie led the way in her truck, snaking their way from the main roads into the back allies of Denver's China Town. Barely a kilometer and a half north was the demarcation line to the old Aztlan sector, territory that had been part of the CAS sector since Ghostwalker came in to power on January 27, 2062, just over nine years ago.

Their final destination was a little shop that John almost felt was in the heart of China itself. The exterior itself was made in traditional Chinese, including a neon sign that hung in the window. Also spelled in neon was another sign that spelled 'MYSTIC CURIOSITIES', with a few of those bulbs flickering every few seconds.

"This's the place?" asked Billy.

"Yup." Valkyrie said as she pushed the door open, jingling a copper bell. She ducked as she stepped through the smaller door.

John was right behind her.

Right inside was a middle aged Chinese gentleman dressed in a traditional robe with narrow spectacles perched on his nose. His black hair and beard were evenly and neatly short cut.

"May I help you?" he asked in slightly accented English.

"Yeah, out of our way." Billy demanded as he tried to muscle his way past Valkyrie. She strong armed him back.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Chinaman asked.

Hunter said something in what sounded like Chinese. She and the Chinaman went back and forth in a conversation that looked like was lost on everyone else.

Finally, "He'll let us in…" Hunter said in English.

"Finally!" Billy said, trying to push his way in again.

This time Hunter stopped him, planting her right hand flat to his chest. "On the condition that we'll listen to his side of the story, first." she finished.

"Fuck that!" cried Billy.

Valkyrie heavily planted a hand on Billy's shoulder. She did not look pleased.

John pulled his Warhawk, drawing a nervous look from Valkyrie. The black and gunmetal revolver looked as big as his forearm in John's hand. He then cocked the hammer all the way back and aimed straight at Billy's head. "I want the fucker more than you, and if you blow this I'll blow your head off!" he growled.

Was it possible, or did Billy's face go even whiter?

"Well?" Hunter asked.

"Alright." Billy said softly, like a little child in trouble.

"If you please, Mr. Wong?" Hunter asked.

Carefully John released the hammer of his Warhawk and holstered it.

Mr. Wong led everyone to a storeroom in the back, and around a stack of crates. Lying on a cot was a wreck of a man, sickly looking and drawn. He was obviously Asian, with dull black hair and pale looking skin.

"Anata wa Takeshi Modori-san desu ka." Hunter said.

The man looked at them before saying, "Yes."

"Mr. Wong said we should listen to your story before we take you." Hunter said.

"Why the hell should we listen?" Billy asked. "Word is he's the guy we want!"

"Slap a downer, chrome dome." John snapped, "Or I'll hack your eyes again and you won't know Takeshi from your dick!"

The threat seemed to work as the razorboy took a step back.

Takeshi nodded his thanks. "I was there that night." he told them, "I was on a rooftop with a rifle wholly ready to execute Catherine as soon as I saw her.

"I was with the Yakuza years ago, and because I failed to protect them when I should have, an assassin was sent to kill my family. After that the Yakuza let me go."

"What the hell does that have to do with the girl?" Billy asked.

"Would you just be quiet?" Valkyrie asked.

John flipped Billy his middle finger.

"I knew the assassin." Takeshi told them, "There was no secret about it. A few months ago I learned that the Dragon had fallen out of favor with the rengo." He paused to take a few deep breaths. "I did some research and found that the Dragon had a daughter."

"Then why not mmmphmmfmfm…" Billy started to say. Looking back, John saw that Valkyrie had clamped one of her sizable hands over Billy's mouth to shut him up.

Takeshi closed his eyes. "Learning what I did, I resolved myself to take from Kazuya what he had taken from me: his family."

John's mind reeled from Takeshi's choice of words. It felt like is legs felt like wet spaghetti noodles and his head was in a blender. Were Kazuya and the Dragon one in the same? It was impossible. All the information he had said they were two separate people!

"But on that rooftop, looking down at that little girl…" Takeshi's voice broke. "I… I… I just couldn't do it."

Was it John's imagination, or was Takeshi starting to cry?

"As I was setting my rifle down," Takeshi told them, "I heard a gunshot and Catherine was dead! I looked to where the shooter would have been, and it was the Dragon. The Dragon had shot his own daughter!"

"I'm guessing you and Kazuya dueled." Hunter said, "And he got away?"

Takeshi only nodded.

"So it's Kazuya 'The Dragon' Hotomi that killed Catherine." John said slowly, "The guy we should be looking for? Her own father?" He was still trying to assimilate how true it must be that Kazuya and the Dragon were the same person. He could not fight the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Again, Takeshi only nodded.

"And you're believing this bullshit?" Billy asked, apparently having worked free of Valkyrie's grip.

"Shut up!" John cried, "Just shut the fuck up, you fucking dumbass!"

"He's telling the truth." Valkyrie told them.

"Lie detector spell?" Hunter asked.

"Yes." Valkyrie said, nodding.

"What the…" Billy started to say, shutting himself up as all three glared at him.

"He could lie, but I'd know it." Valkyrie told them.

"There's such a spell?" Billy asked.

Valkyrie groaned.

"More than one." Hunter said. The icy look she gave Billy said loud and clear for him to keep his mouth shut. John could only hope that Billy understood that.

"Too bad there isn't a spell to make you smarter." John growled.

"Let's just get out of here, okay?" asked Hunter.

John was right behind Valkyrie as she ducked to get out of the storeroom.

"Billy, if you're thinking about haulin' Takeshi in, think again." Hunter said sternly.

Looking back he saw Billy reluctantly following them out.

"That was too fuckin' easy." Billy said when they had walked out of Mystic Curiosities. "You guys were too easy on him."

"We didn't have to be rough on him." Hunter said. "What's the old saying? You attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar?"

"Humph." gruffed Billy.

"We just gotta figure out where this Kazuya Hotomi's hiding out." Hunter said, "Then you can get paid and we can stop listening to your bitching."

"Like that'll stop him." John muttered as he climbed onto his motorcycle.

Hunter said nothing, though by the look John saw on her face as she climbed onto her own Contrail that she was likely having a private conversation with someone. This became apparent from a scowl and look of deep thought on her face as she sat astride her motorcycle instead of starting its engine.

"So what're we waiting for?" asked Billy.

"You can go get this Kazuya asshole right now if you're in such a rush." snipped John.

Thankfully Billy kept his mouth shut.

"Got a contact that says he's holed up at a place called Karma Club." Hunter finally said.

"Klub Karma. Triad club on Belleview." Billy said.

"Why am I not surprised you know that?" John asked. He opened up an ARO to do a search on Klub Karma, and another to call Merlin.

"So what do you know about it?" Hunter asked.

"We ain't just walkin' in. Chinks only, if ya get my drift." Billy told them.

"Merlin's Antiquities." came an animated wizard icon. John ignored the verbal argument between Billy and Hunter. He already knew who would win.

"It's Cypher." John silently sent.

"Hey kid. No word on the ammo yet." Merlin told him.

"Not that. I need to know about a place called Klub Karma." John told him.

"Well, for sure you're not gonna get in without greasing some palms." Merlin said. Thankfully John did not have to ask what Merlin meant. "Means you gotta pay the guys at the door." Merlin added.

"Ah."

"And I'm not sure what's goin' on there," Merlin continued, the wizard icon putting its hands on its hips, "but the manager, she's really beefed up security. Maybe a someone, but I caught her talking with another guy, big troll, talking in Cantonese. Guess they didn't know I don't need a lingo for it, but I caught some mention about the Dragon and something called a Dragon Stone. Sure they weren't talking about G."

"And I'm looking for a guy called 'The Dragon'." John said.

"I'm pretty sure he's there, and the manager's protecting him. Be careful. She's also a real cool customer." Merlin told him.

"Thanks." John said, ending the call. His data search came up with the location of the club as well as the manager's commcode and name.

"And I don't think bustin' in all cowboy is gonna work!" Hunter yelled. John had wondered just how good he was at ignoring people.

"How the fuck you think we're gonna get in?" Billy asked.

"Ever think of calling the manager?" John asked.

"Like he'd listen." grunted Billy.

"She. Lin Yao." John corrected.

"How do you know?" asked Hunter.

"Called a contact. He told me." John said, forwarding a text file with Lin Yao's contact information to Hunter.

"What're you thinking?" Valkyrie asked.

"We try her better side." John said.

"Yeah, right." Billy muttered.

"I get you." Hunter said. "She's Triad. Maybe she doesn't know she's harboring a child killer."

"I don't see what the big deal is." Billy said.

"There's a special place in hell for child molesters and such." Valkyrie told him.

Hunter looked like she was already in a call. After about a minute or two she said, "Alright, we got a meet."

Billy did not look all that pleased as he climbed into the passenger seat of Valkyrie's truck. John wondered if it was some dumb macho thing, like Billy thought he was being yanked by the balls by a woman. John did not care. Hunter knew her shit, and he was content to follow since she seemed like quite the experienced runner.

Klub Karma was once a warehouse, though now it was thoroughly clubbed out on the inside, with not even a bit of decoration on the outside to advertise the place.

Advertisement was not necessary, really. Even as they drove past the parking lot John could feel the pulsing drum and bass shaking the very air. There were also many people in the parking lot just waiting to get into the club.

Hunter led them around to the back of the club. There two bouncers stood guard at a door.

"Make sure to leave your guns behind, Cypher." Hunter said as they parked.

"She that paranoid?" John asked.

"Just do it." Hunter growled.

Figuring it best to not question it this time, John did just that. He even bothered with the slides for his holdout pistols, shoving them all into the cargo space under the seat of his motorcycle. It locked as soon as he closed it.

"Now for once could you keep quiet, Billy?" Hunter asked as they walked up to the bouncers.

Billy said nothing.

One bouncer gave each person a thorough pat down before the other even unlocked the door. John figured that even his hidden holdout pistols would have been found.

The bouncer that unlocked the door also escorted them inside. They crossed a hallway high enough for a troll to walk without fear of hitting the hanging lights above, and through a set of double doors and into a large office. The doors were closed behind them.

A Chinese woman, John figured she was Lin Yao, sat behind a desk near the back wall. She wore a cream colored woman's business suit with a simple silver necklace and matching wire framed glasses. Her long dark hair was tied back in a simple ponytail. She really did not look all that threatening.

Two bodyguards stood like two soldiers behind her. Not at attention, John knew, but a different way John did not know the name of.

"Greetings, I am Lin Yao." she said in English with a slight Cantonese accent, "It is my understanding you have some business to discuss that involves my current arrangement with The Dragon. You have five minutes. What can I do for you?"

"We do." Hunter said. "We know you're hiding a Yakuza assassin here. Someone wants to talk with him and we do not think he'll come quietly. We just want to go in, take him, and leave. Peacefully, if possible."

"We will even forget that you are harboring a child killer." Valkyrie added.

This last statement from Valkyrie seemed to strike a deep nerve in Lin Yao. She seemed to mull things over in her mind before she spoke.

"I think we can arrange something," Lin Yao said, "but first you'll need to do something for me."

John waited for an 'awe crap' or similar statement from Billy. Remarkably he said nothing.

A panel wall screen to one side flickered to life. From the view of club goers and the layout of furniture John figured it was live from a security camera in the club. It zoomed in on a corner booth where a familiar looking troll in a white coat sat. He had dark and a single horn jutted out from the right side of his head, glistening from what might have been a recent waxing.

"This is An Peng." Lin Yao told them. "What I want you do for me is straight forward. Beat the shit out of him, but do not kill him and do not let him know you are doing this for me."

"Should be easy enough." Billy said. "I can take him."

"No, you can't." Valkyrie said.

"Hundred nuyen says I can!" Billy challenged.

"I do not care how you do it, but remember the conditions." Lin Yao said sternly.

"We'll remind him." Hunter said as they left her office.

"So just how are we gonna do this?" Hunter asked. "Just walking out there to kick his ass ain't gonna go over too well."

Things were looking up a bit, as An Peng came around the corner. He virtually ignored them and walked into the restroom.

"Now's your chance, Billy." Valkyrie said.

Puffing up his chest Billy strutted up to the men's room door and walked in.

"Should I wait?" Valkyrie asked.

"No." Hunter and John said at the same time.

Valkyrie walked up to the door. Even John could hear a thump and the sound of something shattering, and Valkyrie was in right away.

Hunter watched the men's room door, as did John. After a few seconds John wondered what was up with the lady's restroom. Especially after another shattering thump.

So he decided to peek in and see what was up.

There were two women already inside, and they certainly were not there for the toilets.

"Oh wow." one of them commented. She had red hair with some purple streaks in it. She wore a purple bikini with a black miniskirt and short vest that she left open. She half sat on the counter with one leg up on it, and the other leg dangling down.

Her friend had darker hair and was dressed similarly, but with a red bikini instead.

Then the mirror shook with a heavy thud.

"Uh, it's the music." John said before either woman asked.

"Killer bass." commented the redhead. "Hey, you wanna shoot up?" she asked John.

"Uh pass." John said. He was not too keen on the thought of having any kind of needle jabbed into his body for any reason.

Then he noticed another reason why one should not do drugs. The redhead's friend was not looking too well at all.

"How's she doing?" John asked.

"Huh? Oh." the redhead said in a spaced out way.

"Shit." John cussed and rushed out. Thankfully Hunter was still outside.

"Get in here quick!" he nearly yelled at her, "Got a girl I think she's ODing!"

Hunter did follow John back into the lady's restroom. The dark haired woman had slumped to a seated position next to the sinks while the redhead was still sitting on them.

"Get her head. We need to lay her down." Hunter told him.

John did as he was told, and together they pulled her gently to lie on the bathroom floor.

From somewhere Hunter pulled out a medkit and hooked a few things up to the woman.

"You know rescue breathing?" Hunter asked.

"What?" John asked back.

"Mesh with the medkit, it'll tell you." Hunter said, not looking at John as she pulled a syringe of some kind out.

John did so, and it accepted his connection right away. With an ARO example John was able to position the woman's head properly. He hesitated a moment before actually pressing his lips to hers, but did anyway, partly because he was about to kiss her but also because of a distracting glance at her cleavage.

Painful seconds passed, and just as John was starting to wonder if this would go on forever, she coughed as she started breathing on her own.

"Outta the way." ordered Hunter.

John slid back and watched as Hunter rolled the woman onto her side. She coughed some more, but did not throw up or anything. "She gonna be okay?" he asked.

"I think so." Hunter said. "Too many downers, I think." There must have been nothing else to do as Hunter started packing up her medkit. John cut his connection to it.

"Bummer." said the redhead. Did she even comprehend that she almost lost her friend?

"Just don't do any more shit, okay?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah. Hey, call me if you need anything." the redhead said. John decided to accept the contact request.

They were met by Valkyrie and Billy out in the hallway. Billy looked like he had been used as a punching bag while Valkyrie held him upright..

"What happened?" Hunter asked.

"Mister 'I can take him' forgot that An Peng's a magician." Valkyrie said. "Billy might've gotten the first blow in, but certainly couldn't take it back."

Billy grumbled silently to himself.

"And An Peng?" Hunter asked.

"He ought to be out for an hour at least." Valkyrie told them.

"I'll get what we need." Hunter told them, heading back into Lin Yao's office. A little while later she was back out and leading the way.

Around the corner from the bathrooms was a door to the club proper. They circled around a mosh pit that was full of dancers and a stage with several Chinese girls in school girl uniforms yelling their lungs out in an effort to have their shock rock music heard. On their way around, John wondered if they really were girls.

At the other side of the stage was an elevator with two guards. Hunter showed them some kind of pass, and one of them opened the elevator door.

The elevator and floor had to have been made sound proof as the noise of the band below was muted to a dull thumping.

The second floor itself looked like a hotel, with burgundy carpet and beige colored walls. The doors themselves looked like real wood, though John figured they were fake.

There were also no guards walking the floor, and John could not find if that was weird or the fact he was expecting guards in the first place was weird. He ran two fingers over his right ear as they rounded a corner in the hallway. There Hunter led them to one particular door.

"So this's the room?" Billy asked.

"If Lin Yao's on the level." Hunter answered.

"She's probably setting us up." Billy muttered.

"There's a way to find out." said John.

"Right, then." Billy said, and before anyone could say a word he kicked the door in and ran inside.

"Who the fuck're you?" they heard a man inside asked.

"Your worst nightmare!" Billy yelled.

Something told John to hit the wall beside the door. Just as he was moving to do an impression of wallpaper he heard two quick gunshots.

Hunter and Valkyrie had also gotten clear of the doorway, and John saw two bullet holes in the opposite wall.

A Japanese man in a rumpled gray suit came barreling out of the door. He had an Ares Predator IV in one hand.

It was like Hunter was expecting this, her cybernetic hand flying at the Japanese man's head. It only clipped his right shoulder as the man turned to run down the hall.

Like a shot John took off after the man. Kazuya or not, he was running and John felt they deserved answers as to why.

Despite his shorter legs John easily overtook the man. Pumping furiously with each step, John threw every gram of strength of his forty kilo body into the larger man, turning to have his left shoulder hit the Japanese man square in the back.

Both went tumbling to the floor, but John was the faster back to his feet. Almost as if it were a reflex he grabbed the Predator from where it had landed, having skidded to hit the wall just ahead of them.

As soon as John's fingers wrapped around the pistol's grip he felt the smartgun system link to his mind. The gun was his, its safety off, and there were fourteen rounds left in the magazine. "Don't fuckin' move." John growled, aiming the Predator with one hand, stone cold and steady.

"Fuck." Hunter cussed as she walked up to them. "Anata wa Kazuya Hotomi-san, desu ka" she said.

"Hai." the Japanese man growled.

"Mother fucker." they heard Billy cuss from the hotel room."

"Sit the fuck down." Valkyrie said sternly. From the sound of the following thump, John could only guess that she either had to shove him down or slugged the razorboy one.

"How's he doing?" Hunter called back.

"Two through and throughs." Valkyrie called back.

"Shit." cussed Hunter.

Keeping the pistol leveled on the man, John told it to keep the round chambered and eject the magazine. He caught it easily in his empty hand and glanced at the bullets.

"APDS." he said, recognizing the load instantly by the shape of the slug. He slapped the magazine back in. The look on Kazuya's face told John that they both knew that John had control of the gun.

"Since Valkyrie's busy…" Hunter said, pulling a small perfume spritzer out of her pocket. John recognized it as the same she had loaned him to help knock out Catherine. She squirted Kazuya twice in the face and he was out. She then patted him down, and out of two more magazines, handing both of them to John.

"You got dumb dumb?" Hunter called back as she hefted Kazuya off the floor. She slipped herself under one arm.

"Got him." Valkyrie said, walking out of the room and carrying Billy in a similar fashion.

"How're we getting him out?" John asked as they walked back to the elevator.

"Our buddies are too drunk to walk, and we're taking 'em home." Hunter told him just as the elevator doors opened.

Walking back out was harder than walking in. No one seemed the wiser that there had been gunshots just above their heads, though who could have known with the super loud shock rock music.

Around the mosh pit they went, past the restrooms, and even right out the back door without anyone giving them a second look. The bouncer at the door even held it for them to walk through.

John watched as Kazuya was cuffed and hobbled before being dumped in the front seat of Valkyrie's truck. Billy grumbled as he was helped in to take the window seat. He did not look like he was feeling too well, but having two bullets punch through your right arm would not make anyone feel good. During this time he put Kazuya's gun away in the cargo space in his motorcycle, trading it and the magazines for his own handguns.

"So, where're we off to?" Valkyrie asked as she climbed into her truck.

"Already messaged her about this." Hunter told them, "Aurora Warrens. Same place as last time."

"Oh shit." John softly cussed.

It was late into the evening, with a lethargic border crossing, when John and the others pulled up to the same safehouse where they had dropped Catherine off a month ago. While Hunter and Valkyrie dealt with pulling a now conscious Kazuya out of the truck, John took his time and looked about the neighborhood. He took in the sounds, the lay of the buildings and noted places he thought Takeshi and Kazuya likely laid in wait.

His eyes lingered at the spot where Catherine probably was when she was shot in the head. Slowly he walked over there, just looking at the ground that now had no trace of even her blood.

"C'mon! Get on over here!" he heard Hunter call.

Not rushing, but certainly not taking his time, John walked back to everyone and followed Hunter into the safehouse.

Valkyrie dropped Kazuya in the chair none too gently. A satisfying grunt escaped him. John noticed that Kazuya was no longer restrained, though Lady Jade did use a set of zip ties to secure Kazuya to the chair. Kazuya did not look pleased.

On a simple and worn table were a long pair of scissors, pliers, several scalpels and hammers, many nails of various sizes and lengths, and a power drill chucked with a long twist drill bit two centimeters thick. Leaning against a corner was a wooden baseball bat.

"Thank you." Lady Jade told them, and John noticed his commlink had received the remaining nine thousand, nine hundred nuyen payment for the job. He watched as she picked up the power drill and pulled the trigger a few times.

"Are you seriously going to use these?" asked Valkyrie. Despite having been like granite for most of the time John had known her, she actually looked squeamish at the prospect of torture.

"You've done your job." Lady Jade told them, "This is not your concern."

"Can I watch?" asked Billy.

"The hell it is." Hunter said sternly.

"Why the hell not?" John asked. "The fucker deserves it!"

"You know what you're talking about?" Hunter asked him, "It's not as simple as you think."

"Isn't it?" John asked. "You don't know what I've been through trying to figure out who the fuck killed Catherine! I've been at it a month now! A month! Lone Star can just shove it under the rug like all the shit they fail at, but I can't!"

"Like I would let you get close to my daughter." growled Kazuya.

John snapped like a dry twig. In three steps he was in Kazuya's face, and before the former Yakuza assassin could blink John landed a left cross so hard that Kazuya could do nothing but topple over to the floor. "Awe, shit!" John cussed as he shook his now smarting hand.

"That's enough!" Hunter yelled.

"No it isn't. Hit him again." goaded Billy.

John felt himself being dragged back by the collar. Like that would stop him as he reached for the Predators inside his coat.

"Oh no you don't!" Hunter shouted. She was on him too well, and before John could get the pistols drawn she had him by the arms. So John went for the Morrissey Élans in their spring loaded holsters.

"Think again." growled Hunter. Though John got the holdouts in his hands, Hunter had an iron grip on his wrists. She used her strength and height against John to forcefully keep his hands up in the air. If he wanted to shoot anything, it would only be the ceiling.

"Let go!" John growled, "Let go of me!" When Hunter proved she would not let go of him, he considered hacking her cybernetics. This proved futile right away as he could not find either of her commlinks.

"Don't see why you're so worked up about it." remarked Billy.

"Shut it or I'll let him loose on you." threatened Hunter.

As angry as John felt at Kazuya, the thought of how satisfying it might be to unload onto Billy at that moment sounded appealing. This was until he noticed Lady Jade looking at him.

Lady Jade had been as cold and hard as her name might suggest when they arrived, but now she seemed like a completely different woman. Gone was the cold anger and hatred she had when she had picked up the power drill. Even as she glanced back to Kazuya, now bruised and bleeding from the nose because of John's punch, that cold fire of hatred did not return.

"So what if Kazuya tortured you and Takeshi by killing Takeshi's family." Hunter said, "So what if he put Mrs. Westmore through the same. Do you really want to be the same kind of monster he is? Uncaring about what happens to those around you?"

"Yeah, I do." Billy said gruffly.

John honestly expected Hunter to let go of him. She probably was at least tempted to after his ill timed comment.

"Think about it." Hunter said coolly, ignoring Billy. At first John thought she was talking to him, but then noticed Lady Jade looking their way again. "Do you really want to be that monster? And think of the kids. You really wanna be condoning torture to them? Prove yourself better than Kazuya could ever be. Prove to yourself that you can be just as good as Takeshi in not fucking up the lives of children. Show Catherine proper honor in dealing with her murderer."

"Honor is supposed to be a big deal among the yakuza." Valkyrie added. "The Dragon did not show any honor in killing his own daughter."

"You know nothing of honor." spat Kazuya.

"And do you, kid killer?!" yelled John. He tried kicking Kazuya, but his leg was way too short to reach.

Hunter replied in Japanese. John had no idea what she said, but from the stone cold look on her face, and the fact he could tell by the matching tone of her voice, whatever she did say looked to chill Kazuya to the bone.

"Prove that you have more honor than he does." Valkyrie continued, "You are the better. Prove it. Not just for us, but yourself."

The power drill clattered to the floor as it slipped from Lady Jade's hands. It almost looked like she was going to break down entirely.

Without any signs of weakness or hesitation Lady Jade drew her pistol and aimed it at Kazuya as he lay on the floor. She said something in Japanese.

Kazuya spat before replying something harshly in Japanese.

Lady Jade shot Kazuya through the head, his skull blowing out the back and splaying the wall with his blood and brain matter. There was a slight trickle of blood running down his face.

John felt Hunter's grip ease as she let go of him. As angry as he was, as royally pissed off as he could have ever been, so much so that he felt he could make Aden's rampage in Tehran in 2020 look like a grade school brawl, it was all gone with that single gunshot.

"Fuckin' drag." muttered Billy as he walked out the door.

"C'mon." Hunter gently said, "Let's go home."

"Just like that?" John asked.

"Yeah." Hunter said, "Why?"

"What about Catherine's mother?" John asked, "She should know."

"What do you propose we tell her?" Valkyrie asked. "I feel for you, but it's not exactly best for anyone that we tell her everything."

John felt empty, completely hollow inside as he followed the women out. He did not look at them as he got onto his black Katana-11 and rode off north through the Warrens. A short while later he was pulling into home. The empty feeling in his stomach was still there.

"I'm home." John half heartily said as he parked in the motorcycle's usual space.

Just as he turned around John saw his roommate grabbing him in a tight hug. He almost fell backwards over his motorcycle. It took a moment to realize that she was crying as she held him tightly.

"What's wrong?" John asked.

She did not say anything, and this was starting to annoy John greatly.

"You mind? I'd like to go to bed." John said.

Before letting go, she kissed him lightly on the cheek. John felt more surprised than anything as he watched her walk back to her room and close the door. She still wore the same brown tee and jeans as the day they had first met.

That night was the first this week that John did not have any nightmares. The morning, however, was not any better, with John feeling like he had not even gotten any sleep in the first place.

The day passed quietly, with only a single sighting of his roommate as she made a trip to the bathroom.

The next day, as John was loading up the morning's scream sheets to see of any word about Catherine or Kazuya, he noticed an alert from Lady Jade. In it was a transfer of two thousand nuyen and a message.

The note said: "I am sorry for what I unintentionally put you through this last month. Think of the money as an apology, and a thank you for helping me save my own soul at the same time. Call me anytime if there is anything I can help you in the future. Lady Jade."

Looking up, John saw Catherine's pink commlink still sitting on the shelf. It had sat on a shelf above his in his old place, and by a bit of luck had not been damaged in the fire Shaq had started. It had never been turned on since that day at the end of March when he had turned it off, the day before Catherine had been murdered.

A thought came to mind, and the feeling it was now time to move on. He got dressed, including his black sunglasses, before pocketing Catherine's commlink.

On his way to his motorcycle, John stopped at his roommate's door. "I got something I gotta do." he said, "Shouldn't take me long. I'll be back in a few hours."

He had mounted his motorcycle and was just about to start it when he noticed her standing beside him. Looking at her, John saw a pleading look in her eyes. "You wanna come with me?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes." she said softly, speaking for the first time in two weeks.

"It's kinda personal." John told her.

It did not seem to matter. She climbed onto the motorcycle behind him, slipping her arms underneath his and holding on tightly.

"Oh, alright." John muttered as he started the engine.


	9. Run 09 : Tunnel Vision

Run 9 : Tunnel Vision (based on the mission written by Rene Hess)

Things had changed quite a bit in the last week for John and his roommate. She had actually started talking to him. A little, at least. At least he had her name now, though all she would say was that her name was Mina.

She still did not eat anything, and this did bother John quite a bit. In opening up a little bit she told him she used magic. John had no idea exactly how this worked, and it confused him even further when she apologized for using that spell on him while he slept for almost two days straight. This was when he had come home after raiding a DocWagon hospital. John wondered if this was why he had some very strange dreams then.

Mina did spend more time out of her room, but spent almost all of the time just watching John while he either practiced with his sword or fiddled with his Doberman drones or Katana-11 motorcycle.

It was only yesterday where Mina proved to John that she was a magician. One of the other groups that rented out some of the storage units thought it would be a good time to accost the both of them were coming back from a Stuffer Shack for some food. John had gotten knocked for a good loop when one had clubbed him in the head, and when she recovered Mina had unleashed a gout of bright red flame from both of her hands. It was not too serious for the other guys, only one guy had even got burned, but with no magician in their group they had taken the smart route and fled. Once they were inside Mina had touched up John's injury with a healing spell that left him good as new.

She had also had dropped a bombshell on John that evening, telling John she wanted to do the same work he did. Not quite sure what to say, John told her he would ask the next chance he god.

That chance came much sooner than he expected.

It was hours before dawn the next day when John's commlink started ringing. Without thinking he answered the call, stringing it to his mind. "Hullo?" he said sleepily.

"Mornin' kiddo." Tabby said.

"Mornin?" John asked.

"Too early for ya?"

John tried to look out a window. The sky above was still overcast with the storm clouds that had vented their rage earlier that night.

"Yeah." he muttered.

"Time to pack your bags, got a job for ya." Tabby told him. "Basic'ly it's search and rescue. Be at the corner of Broadway and Evans Avenue in two hours. And bring your gear."

"Mind if I bring a friend along?" John asked.

"I think he'd mind." Tabby said, "This ain't a game, ya know."

"She's a magician." John told her, "Been livin' with me a few weeks now."

"You sly dog you." purred Tabby.

"Hey! It ain't like that!" exclaimed John.

"She got useful skills?" Tabby asked.

"I guess." John said, "I mean, ya can't just sling spells without learnin' somethin', right? She's also a healer."

"Guess it should be okay. Anything else I ought to know?" Tabby asked.

"She's… um… 'bout my age." John said sheepishly.

There was a noticeable sigh from Tabby's end. "Alright, I'll let him know." she said, "But this is strictly a probationary thing. She fucks up it's your ass, not mine, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it." John told her.

Mina seemed quite excited that she could do some work with John, though she really did not say it.

Once they were geared up, and some advice given to Mina, John opted to take a coyote path into the CAS sector. The address Tabby had given John was close to the western border of the old Aztlan sector, though you would not know it now with the reconstruction that had happened in the last eight years. This was especially true with the hurried construction for the 2072 Winter Olympics coming up next year.

They had time to spare when they got to the corner of Broadway and Evans. It was so early in the morning still that a light fog had covered the city, slowly beginning to burn off as the sun began to crest above the horizon in the east.

Hunter was already there, waiting, when John and Mina pulled up. He parked his motorcycle next to hers.

"Glad you could make it." Hunter said. "I think it's a bad idea to bring your girlfriend, though."

"She's not my girlfriend." John bit back. "She's gonna be workin' with us."

"Oh great." groaned Hunter. "Can ya do anything helpful?" she asked.

"Um… I, um…" she said sheepishly.

Hunter groaned. "She's greener than you were." she said.

"I can do magic." Mina managed to say.

"Spells and spirits?" Hunter asked.

Mina nodded. She looked rather intimidated by Hunter. But then what preteen girl would not at least feel a little intimidated by a curvy and rather well busted woman who was just as smart as she was pretty.

"Got a name?" Hunter asked.

"We, uh, hadn't gotten to that." John said for her.

"Hopefully we can pick something up for you that's not too embarrassing." Hunter said.

At about that time Valkyrie pulled up in her truck. Billy got out once she parked.

"Why'd you have to bring this bozo?" John asked.

Billy sneered back. Smart choice.

John caught Mina's eyes as she saw Valkyrie step out of the truck. Mina's eyes went wide as she looked up at the two meter twenty blonde woman.

"A troll?" she asked, sounding like she had never seen one before.

"Fomori." Valkyrie corrected. She gave Mina a once over and said, "Another magician, eh? Extra magic might be handy."

"She's really a magician?" Hunter asked.

"Unless she's got flamethrowers in her hands." John said.

"About as powerful as me." Valkyrie said, "Doesn't mean she's as skilled."

Mina frowned.

"And about Billy, he flagged me down on the way here." Valkyrie continued, "Said he had a job here. Thought I'd cut him a break. Again."

John snickered.

A black SUV pulled up close to them, parking a friendly distance away from their vehicles. Two large orks dressed in suits and holding submachine guns, one male and one female, stepped out first. They looked around like they were cops clearing a room, stepping to take defensive positions in the parking lot.

Then a back door opened, and a human male, slim and dressed in gray coveralls and a pink construction helmet stepped out. He walked up to John and the others, and he could see dark rings under the man's eyes. Maybe it was extreme paranoia?

"I was told to expect a few kids." the man said, "You sure about this?" he asked, looking at Billy.

"We don't need 'em." Billy proudly said.

"Bullshit." Hunter said. "Don't listen to him."

The man looked to Valkyrie.

"Cypher's good. He won't let you down." Valkyrie said.

"And I'm vouchin' for her." John added, pointing to Mina.

"I hope I won't regret sending kids in." the man sighed. "You can call me Mr. Johnson. What I'm lookin' for is for shadowrunners to do a search and rescue expedition. It's all underground. Are you all in or out?"

"Yeah, I'm in." Hunter said without hesitation.

"Me too." added Valkyrie.

"No question. I'm in." John added. He had to prod Mina to get her to speak up.

"Uh, yeah, me too." she said with quick strength.

"Search and rescue?" Billy asked.

"He thinks he can negotiate." John whispered to Mina. She did not look sure how she was supposed to take this.

"Are you in or out?" Mr. Johnson asked sternly.

"Alright." Billy relented.

"Just a bit of background, so you know." Mr. Johnson said, looking a little more relaxed. "Yesterday, during an excavation for the foundation of a new building a forgotten drainage pipe was found. Wuxing, who owns the property, wanted to know what's down there, so they sent an exploration team down there. They reported some 'disturbing' findings, then we lost contact."

"I get you." Hunter said.

John looked to Mina, who was looking at him. He only shrugged. He had no idea what Hunter might be thinking or knowing right now.

"I'll pay you, of course." Mr. Johnson said, "And I can help with equipment if you need. Pay will be seven thousand each when you get back."

"Shit." groaned Billy. "Only seven thousand?"

"You're really a greedy asshole, aren't you?" Valkyrie asked.

"You already accepted. I think it's a little late to negotiate the price." added Hunter.

John thought seven thousand each was okay for him and Mina. After all, it was more than the pay of his first job, and he was living alone at that time.

"Aren't I gonna need more?" Mina whispered to John.

"What'da'ya mean?" John asked back softly.

"I need a lodge… thingy… if I wanna make my magic stronger." Mina told him, still speaking softly. "It'll cost at least three thousand for everything."

"And a good fake ID'll cost over four at least." John added. Speaking up, he asked, "Hey, um, how many magicians did you send with the first team?"

"One. Why?" Mr. Johnson said.

"We got two." John said, "Think that might be worth for having a backup when the first team had one."

"He's right. We're both strong magicians." Valkyrie added, indicating to herself and Mina.

"You sure she's got the guts?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Torched some gangers good the other day." John said, exaggerating a little.

"Hmm, alright. Ten thousand each." Mr. Johnson said.

Mina smiled.

"Cool." John said. He hoped Billy would not get too energetic about getting an extra three thousand nuyen, but he really wanted Mina to get a good starting reserve of cash. John did have the advantage of not having to buy some of his gear, which included the holdout pistols that were hiding up his sleeves.

"How else was the first team equipped?" Hunter asked.

"Small arms, mostly." Mr. Johnson said, "Two were weapons specialists and had assault rifles."

"Cypher, get the details on the team. I'll be right back." Hunter said.

Mr. Johnson sent a batch file to John, which included names, ages, pictures, and more details about the Wuxing team than John thought they would need. Most were human, but there was an ork and an elf among the mix, and all of them were Chinese. At least John figured they were based on their names.

When Hunter returned she had an assault rifle of her own in her hands.

"Where the hell'd you get that?" asked Billy.

"This Steyr AUG-CSL? I keep it in my cycle." Hunter said.

John did a quick search on what Hunter said, and found a match almost right away. The Steyr AUG-CSL was one of those guns that could be assembled in a variety of different ways in a few minutes to function from a submachine gun to a full on machinegun. By the images John found, Hunter had hers built as an assault rifle.

Mr. Johnson had night vision goggles with thermographic sensors for everyone, but only Mina and Valkyrie took a pair. Billy and Hunter both had cybernetic eyes with these options, and John's goggles included them too though he actually never used them.

Once they were geared up with extra climbing equipment, provided by Mr. Johnson, they made their way to the drainage pipe.

The tunnel itself was roughly five meters wide, and smelled rather musty as they headed deeper in. It was damp in the tunnel, with an occasional patch of moss and fungi, and even a puddle on the well-worn floor. The others made no efforts to avoid the puddles, but both John and Mina did what they could to sidestep or hop over them whenever possible.

The daylight behind them was almost lost when they came to a T junction with a choice to go left or right. Embedded in the wall was a tag that projected a simple ARO with "19:27" in white characters in a green field.

"What's that?" asked Billy.

"An ARO." John said flatly.

"It ain't an arrow." Billy returned.

Hunter sighed. "Looks like a timestamp for when an RFID was planted here when the first team went by." she said.

"Right then. Off we go." Billy said, taking the left passage.

No one else seemed to be in a hurry yet to go either way. John checked out both directions, and thought he could feel something down the passage to the right. It tugged at him, a signal that just was not quite there.

"I think we should go this way." John said, pointing the other way.

"Yeah, I'm getting it too." Hunter added. "Get your ass in gear, Billy. We're going this way." she called.

"What all could be down here?" John asked.

"Hopefully nothing." Valkyrie said.

"True." added Hunter.

"Hey, wait up!" panted Billy as he ran up to and past them. He took the lead as they walked down the tunnel and towards the next tag.

John, Mina, and Valkyrie all carried flashlights, supplied to them by Mr. Johnson with their climbing gear and such. Hunter had a nifty trick, with lights installed in her cybereyes to light wherever she looked.

But for John that was not all. Unlike his goggles or those worn by Valkyrie and Mina, John's eyes also let him see heat. This did not show up too well in normal light, but in the poor light of the tunnel he was able to see the pipes more clearly as they jutted and receded through the wall.

That next tag they found was similar to the first, except for the numbers "19:45" instead. This one was embedded in the left hand wall right at the corner of a four way intersection.

"I hope there's nothing." Mina said softly.

"Bah, I can handle it. What's the worst we could find?" Billy asked.

On the far side of the intersection was a drain. Apparently there was something in there that decided to answer Billy's question as it came bursting out of the water.

With Hunter in the way, John could not quite see what it was. From Billy's initial screaming, and some animal roaring, he figured it was something scary bad.

With a smoothness that only comes with experience and practice Hunter sidestepped Billy and opened fire with her Steyr. Rat-a-tat-tat was all John heard.

"What the fuck was that?" cried Billy.

"Alligator." Hunter said much more calmly.

John got as good a look as he could. It certainly looked like an alligator. With half a dozen holes in its body it certainly was now a dead alligator.

With a snap Billy extended the spurs in his left arm, and with a grunt he stabbed the dead alligator through the head three times before he stood.

"Satisfied?" Valkyrie asked.

It was hard to tell if Billy was glaring at her or not.

"This way." John said, feeling another tag down the tunnel to his left.

Continuing on they came to another T junction with a left or right choice. Billy was silent as both Hunter and John guided everyone down the left passage. After a sharp bend they came up to another T junction with choices of left or straight ahead.

"So, which way?" asked Billy.

John looked down both tunnels. "I can't get a good bead on which way." he said.

"Me neither." added Hunter.

"Well then…" Billy said, taking the lead down the left hand passage.

A good ways later John figured that it had been the wrong choice, especially when the tunnel turned away from the direction he had felt the next tag. What they found was a dead end.

The walls of the chamber they found were decorated with pictographs written in a red-brown ink. On the dry ground were small piles of ashes, dry herbs, small bones, and the stubby remains of red and black candles. The air had a dry, flowery smell.

"Looks like a ritual chamber." commented Valkyrie as she looked around.

"No magic." Mina said softly.

"What was that?" Hunter asked.

"There's… no magic here." Mina said a little more strongly.

"Not now, if there was." Valkyrie added.

Hunter knelt down to pick something up, and John noticed it was a shell casing.

"Assault rifle." Hunter said. She then sniffed the open end, adding "Fired within the last forty hours or so."

"Maybe sooner?" Valkyrie asked.

"Oh yeah." Hunter answered.

"C'mon then!" Billy said anxiously, already leaving the chamber.

They continued on, though had to drag Billy back from trying to go back the way they had came. As they walked along a gentle left hand bend in the tunnel they all could hear the sound of rushing water. Then they reached another tag with a timestamp of "21:03" and a rushing waterfall going down a wide hole.

The waterfall itself was made by half a dozen, thirty centimeter wide pipes spewing water at very high pressures. The hole itself was more than large enough to let someone climb down and only get misted by the rushing water.

It was either down the hole or go back.

"Looks like we've gotta climb down." Valkyrie said as she peered over the edge.

"What's the matter, Billy?" asked Hunter.

"You sure we gotta go down there?" he asked.

"Ya scared?" John asked him.

"Just not sure about this." was all Billy said.

"You've got claws." John said, "You can use 'em to climb down."

"I'll go down first." Valkyrie said.

John watched as Valkyrie's body lifted up on its own, floated over to the hole, and slowly went down.

"How'd she do that?" John asked.

"Magic." Hunter said, examining the ground around the hole.

"Ouch!" John cried out when Mina stepped on his foot. Before he could say more she had an arm around him. In the poor light he could see her face suddenly glow brightly with warmth. Standing on his feet brought her eye level with John, though she was actually trying not to look him in the eye.

Mina said nothing, only looking at him, and suddenly John felt himself floating up above the ground. He felt like a fishhook with Mina as the bait as they went down the hole next.

The walls were rather smooth, and wet. John was actually glad he was being levitated down by Mina instead of trying to hang onto a wet rope.

The bottom was about fifteen meters or so, John figured, and the tunnel progressed onward in only one direction that a metahuman could travel. A tunnel wider than any they had walked before. Actually it would have been possible to drive two lanes of traffic now if the cars could handle the fifteen centimeter deep water John was now standing in.

The walls and ceiling were covered with mosses and fungi in many places, with egg shaped growths at some of the patches of fungus. All of this glowed with a slight warmth.

"Anything unusual?" asked Hunter when she next reached the bottom, the Steyr slung across her back. With a whirring zip she wound the myomeric wire back into her left arm and reconnected her hand. With her hand attached she readied her assault rifle once more.

John had thought of mentioning a weakening matrix connection, but figured Hunter would know this just as well as him. He also figured that the others would be better off not knowing.

"Magic's a little hazy further on." Valkyrie said.

Mina nodded.

"Just how bad?" asked Hunter.

"It's not much now. On a scale of one to ten, two. Hopefully it won't get worse." Valkyrie finished.

"How bad's a ten?" asked John.

"Impossible for most magicians to work magic." Valkyrie said.

They all waited until Billy finally reached the bottom. He was thoroughly soaked from the spray of water. From there they trudged through the water. John's skin felt a little tingly as they walked, and when he tried to do a search on the fungus they walked under he found he could no longer access anything on the matrix. He gritted his teeth as they continued.

They stopped when they reached another T junction with a left or right choice.

"There's a tag that way." John said, pointing to the left.

It was not far, and the tag that said "21:37" was at another T junction where they could go to the right or straight on.

Billy led on straight ahead, though they did not have to go far before running into a dead end.

"Should've brought explosives." muttered Billy.

"Bullshit." returned Hunter as she turned to head back to the junction, "That wall's old. No way the other team came through this way."

John, with Mina right by his side, followed the women. Billy brought up the rear, grumbling.

They proceeded on, following the tags as best as John or Hunter could detect them.

Around a corner they found a human, and attached to his leg was the biggest snake John had ever seen. It was close to ten meters long, with orange and yellow banded scales.

It also saw them, releasing its bite on the man and rearing its head to hiss at them with bared teeth.

"Easy! Easy!" Hunter yelled, followed by more words that John could not understand.

Almost like an entranced cobra the giant snake held itself, though it did close its mouth.

"Why the hell should we take it easy?" Billy asked loudly.

"It's a naga. We can try talking to it." Hunter told them.

"It's a fuckin' big snake is what it is." Billy countered, snapping out the blades in both forearms.

The naga opened its mouth again, bearing needle sharp teeth and hissing.

Billy lunged at it, but the naga reacted with a gout of flame from its open mouth. The flames were sprayed short and wide, and Billy recoiled in surprise. He slipped and landed on his buttocks.

Mina replied with a gout of flame of her own, much more intense as the narrow stream skimmed past the naga's evasive head.

"Settle down, everyone!" Hunter yelled.

Oddly enough, the naga spoke. John cussed to himself as he could only guess at what it said, though it sounded like the strange words Hunter had used moments ago.

"Damn thing's hungry and scared." Hunter said.

"Well good for it." Billy said loudly as he stood.

John looked at the man, and thought his face looked familiar. He brought up the files of the first team and flipped through their icons. The slight flow of data barely eased the creepy crawly feel on his skin.

"Let's just kill it and go on." Billy continued.

"Not a chance." challenged Hunter.

John took a second look through the icons.

"It ain't got shit for fire, I can take it." Billy told them, "Just surprised me the first time."

"And you won't do well if I'm not countering it's magic for you." Valkyrie added. John took that to mean she was not going to protect Billy if he provoked the fight.

"Got it." John announced, finally finding the right icon. "He's Miao Jhong-Shun." he read slowly, trying to pronounce the man's name correctly. "He's the pale…ont…ologist of the group."

"At least we're on the right track, still." Valkyrie said, stepping towards Miao. The naga coiled itself back, making no aggressive moves as Valkyrie laid her hands on the man.

John could swear he saw a mirage around Valkyrie's hands, something like a concussion wave you can see from an explosion, except this held itself only a centimeter or two from her hands. The magic was obvious once Maio's injured leg began to repair itself at an astonishing rate.

"It's just a fuckin' snake!" cried Billy.

"I am no ssnake. I am a naga." it hissed.

"What's the difference?" asked Billy.

"Nagas can talk?" John asked.

"You're hungry?" Mina asked. Looking to her, John saw her looking at the naga.

"Sst…arving." it said.

Mina held a hand out, and the naga tentatively slithered closer, and John half expected a red forked tongue to dart out. They were maybe half a meter apart, almost like they were frozen in time.

"Move, and I'll shoot you." Hunter said.

Looking over at her, John saw she was watching Billy more than him. He looked back just in time to see the naga move close enough to put the flat of its head into the palm of Mina's hand. They stood like that for several seconds before they separated.

"How'd you know it'd be okay?" John asked.

"Just about every naga that can cast magic knows mind probe and such spells." Hunter said. "If she knew a spell that'd help it…"

"I am a he." the naga corrected.

"That'd help him," Hunter amended, "then he'll let her cast it on him."

"Healings done." Valkyrie announced, "But I don't think he'll be with it."

She must have been right. Miao was muttering softly about demons and devils and such.

"And he'll slow us down if we take him with." Hunter said.

"Will you watch him?" Mina asked softly.

The naga nodded. "For your aid, yess." the naga said.

"You're gonna trust it?" asked Billy.

"Would you like to be an it?" Hunter asked back.

"Hunter had ya by the nuts once before, don't forget." John added.

Thankfully Billy said nothing, looking indignant as he successfully kept his mouth shut.

"We'll be back for him. It shouldn't be too long." Hunter told the naga.

He simply nodded.

They moved on, and at another T junction they found a tag with a timestamp of "22:43". Heading straight John was able to pick up another tag with a "23:58" timestamp.

"What the fuck took 'em so long to cover thirty meters?" asked Billy.

No one spoke as they approached, and soon found that there was a sizable crevasse in the floor roughly five meters across.

"Maybe they checked down there first?" John asked.

"Let's check it out, then." Hunter said.

Valkyrie went down first, floating down like she did at the waterfall. Like before, Mina stood on John's feet while they floated down together. Her face lit up just as warmly as last time, growing just a bit more brighter with the longer drop.

As they floated down John noticed holes that had recently been bored into the wall.

The crevasse was almost directly over a Y intersection of subway tunnels. As far as John could see the tunnels went on forever.

They stepped away so Hunter could touch down without landing on them, her left arm making a metallic zipping sound as she recoiled the myomeric wire to collect her hand.

"Nifty thing, huh?" asked John.

"Been really handy today." Hunter said.

"Shit!" they heard Billy scream, and with the clatter of metal on stone he came tumbling down. He hit the ground with a thwump.

"What happened?" Hunter asked.

"Fuckin' bats." growled Billy before he stood himself back up.

"So which way do we go?" Hunter asked.

"No idea." John said.

"Thought I heard something that way." Valkyrie said, pointing down one of the tunnels.

Like before Billy led the way. He was infallibly confident that he could handle anything they might come across.

The tunnel was most certainly abandoned, with spots of rust marring the subway tracks.

Despite the cool air, John's skin felt warm yet irritated. Not to mention the click-clack of Billy's chrome feet was growing annoying and starting to feel like pinpricks to his eardrums.

About three hundred meters from the Y junction they found the tunnel was walled off. There was an old subway car, painted in shades of dark brown, next to the wall. It also glowed warmly in the dark, though John could not see through the walls or windows.

As they drew close an elfin woman came out of the subway car. She had olive skin, flowing black hair that reached well past her shoulders, and dark brown eyes. She wore a medium brown long coat, dusty gray from a long time of wear in the tunnels.

"Welcome!" she called to them.

"Welcome my ass." Billy said darkly, "What'd you do to 'em?"

"Shut the fuck up." John harshly said.

"Chill, both of you." reprimanded Hunter. She stepped forward, giving Billy a shove.

"We're here looking for another group of explorers." Hunter continued. "Have you seen them?" She still held her Steyr ready.

"Come on in and we'll talk." the woman told them, stepping back into her subway car.

"Why not just talk out here?" asked Billy as John and Mina walked around him.

"Ever hear of manners?" Valkyrie asked.

The inside of the subway car was a little cramped, but homey. Hunter apparently found things to be calm, and slung her Steyr. She also already had company.

Already sitting in her living room was Mark 'Raven' Longfeather, wearing a gray suit and holding is Hopi stylized raven mask. He stood, and nodding to them left.

"You can call me Eliza." the woman said, collecting five cups and setting them on a short table. Despite what John was expecting to find, the cups, while well worn, were clean.

"What do ya do?" asked Billy.

"Stuff." Eliza answered, pouring steaming black tea into their cups. When all of the cups were filled she replaced the decanter on its hot plate.

"What about the other explorers?" Hunter asked, taking a cup for herself and sniffing it. It must have been okay because she did take a sip.

Following her lead, John took two cups and handed one of them to Mina. Valkyrie also took a cup for herself, making the cup look like it belonged with a child's toy tea set in her large hand. Only Billy did not take his cup.

"Yeah, I know about them." Eliza said, pulling a small yet intact yet hairless devil rat from a pickling jar. With a knife that was as clean as the cups were she started slicing pieces off of it like it was a roast turkey. She put the rat back in the jar, and brought the cut pieces in a bowl to the table.

"Well?" asked Billy impatiently. He was the only one who reached for a piece of pickled devil rat meat. John only sipped his black tea.

"You think she's just gonna tell you?" Valkyrie asked.

"Yeah." Billy said with a conviction usually heard in fools.

"I heard them," Eliza continued, "they went by here and all."

"What's it gonna cost?" Hunter asked.

Eliza swallowed what John suspected was a bit of devil rat. "There's a spirit near here that doesn't get along with me." she told them, "I'll tell you everything I know about the other expedition."

"Or you could tell us right now." Billy said.

"Afraid you'll handle it like last time?" chided John.

"I'd like to see you try." Billy countered.

"Like I'd deal with a spirit on my own." John said, "I'd get a magician or the like to do it."

"I hope you've got a magician with you." Eliza said.

"We do." Hunter said.

Mina looked like she was about to say something, but when she looked at John he only shook his head.

"It's simple enough. I'll show you to the spirit and you get rid of it. When that's done I'll tell you what you need to know."

John gulped down the last of his tea, as did the others except Billy.

Eliza showed them down one of the other tunnels. They were a fair distance away when she finally stopped and pressed two particular stones at the same time.

A new tunnel opened up for them, large enough to let Valkyrie walk down without having to scrunch herself smaller or duck.

"It's about twenty meters down there." Eliza said.

Unsurprisingly Billy took the lead. Valkyrie was right behind him.

"Is it a good idea that we all go down?" John asked, walking between Valkyrie and Mina.

"Probably not." Hunter said, "But somebody's gonna have to help me drag Billy's ass out of here while they deal with the spirit."

"Fuck you! I said I could deal with it myself!" Billy yelled.

With an explosion of flying dirt the spirit attacked. An earthen fist of dirt, gravel, and broken bricks nearly clocked Billy in the head. The razorboy turned out to be surprisingly quick to duck just in time.

If only he were so lucky the second time, as a similar earthen fist came out of the other wall. He hit the wall, and amazingly was not out of the fight yet.

Valkyrie stopped, pushing the others back. John jockeyed to at least try and watch Billy get his ass kicked. He so hated missing it last week, when Billy said he could take on a troll magician by himself.

The spirit pressed the attack, this time landing two blows and striking harder with the second.

With a drunken swing of an extended spur, Billy managed to only knock loose gravel aside.

"Aren't we gonna help him?" asked Mina.

It looked like Billy thought he got an upper hand, lashing out with both sets of arm blades. To John it looked like he was really scratching up the wall.

"Not until he asks, or gets knocked out." Valkyrie said.

The spirit was impossible to see unless John managed to catch some dirt moving in an impossible way. It gave off no heat, and apparently had no body other than the very dirt itself.

That moment apparently came, with an attack Billy had not expected at all. The very floor decided to attack, launching the razorboy hard into the ceiling. When the dirt and rock receded Billy dropped like a rag doll.

"Can you see it?" Valkyrie asked.

"Yes." Mina said.

They waited, but nothing happened.

"What's it doin'?" asked John.

"Waiting." Valkyrie said.

John felt Mina press close to him, and before he could ask why her whole body went limp. He was barely able to catch her to keep her head from hitting the rocky floor like a basketball.

"Shit! Cypher, get her out of here!" ordered Hunter.

Holding her from behind, his arms crossed over her chest, John slowly dragged her backwards out of the tunnel.

"What happened?" asked Eliza when John came out of the tunnel.

"No fuckin' clue." John answered.

"Lay her down here." Eliza said. John saw she had taken her long coat off and bunched it up like a pillow. With the ground also a lot smoother than the tunnel was now, John carefully laid her down and pulled her night vision goggles off.

"Shit. Shouldn't've asked you kids to do this." muttered Eliza.

It was not long until Mina groaned.

"Looks like she's coming around." Eliza said, sounding quite relieved.

Her eyes fluttered open. "Ow." Mina said.

"Feelin' alright?" John asked.

Mina said nothing, and tried to sit up. Despite Eliza putting her hand on Mina's shoulder, she did anyway.

"I think she did a number on that earth elemental." Valkyrie said as she emerged from the tunnel. Behind her was Hunter under one of Billy's arms as she carried his still unconscious body.

"What happened?" asked Eliza.

"Numbnuts thought he'd be able to take it on his own." John said.

"And she projected." Valkyrie added, "It was like watching a phoenix zip around and tear apart a lion chunk by chunk."

"It's gone?" Eliza asked.

"Can't say it's gone for good." Valkyrie answered, "But, yeah, it's gone."

"Great! C'mon back and we'll talk." Eliza said happily.

John helped Mina to her feet, and Eliza collected her coat. He also helped Mina to stay on her feet as she leaned on him as they walked.

This time they sat down while Eliza refilled their cups of tea. John and Mina shared half of the couch, with Mina leaning against John's side.

Billy was dumped none too gently in a chair of his own in the corner. Eliza did not seem to mind.

"So, what all is it you've got to tell us?" asked Hunter.

"I first heard them after they passed the waterfall." Eliza told them, "They sounded tense but excited, like it was a Sunday walk. Even heard them talking about fighting some critters. They seemed quite confident about it all.

"That all changed when they crossed the abyss." she continued, "They were acting like they were threatened, that they should abort their mission."

"So you were following them?" Hunter asked.

"Sound carries pretty well." Eliza told them. "Heard them from down here. "A while after I lost track of them. An hour after that I heard screams and gunfire. It's been quiet ever since."

"Shit." cussed Hunter.

"What could they have run into?" Valkyrie asked.

"I'm not the only person living down here." Eliza told them. "There's another guy, Enrico Trebol. He's from Aztlan, before Ghostwalker came. He has a thaumaturgical laboratory down here where he could do his research undisturbed.

"When Ghostwalker drove out Aztech," she continued, "they forgot about him. He's been alone since then."

"Great way to go nuts." John said.

"I'm afraid so." Eliza said, agreeing with him. "We used to meet for beer and all. When I noticed he was losing his mind, we just kinda stopped."

"What're you thinking?" Valkyrie asked.

"What to do about Enrico." Hunter said.

"What would Billy say?" Mina asked sheepishly.

"Prob'ly cuss, say the team's dead, and we should head back." John said. He drew a shocked look from both Mina and Eliza.

"Kid's right." Hunter said matter-of-factly, "Doesn't mean we're gonna do that."

"I don't know what he could've done, but before he lost his mind he was an alright guy." Eliza told them. John could see a genuinely concerned look on her face.

John ran a few fingers over his ear, thinking. "Could he get help if we pulled him out?" he asked.

"No way to know for sure." Hunter said, "But we can't know if we don't try. Anyway, I think it'll be best if we wait for numbnuts to wake up before we go."

While waiting the others had a chance to relax some, and John ended up having to put his arm around Mina or risk it going numb.

It was about an hour before Billy finally woke up, grumblings and about as cheerful as a hippo with a hernia. True to John's word, upon hearing Eliza's recount of what she heard of the first team, Billy's response was, "Fuck it, they're dead. Let's get the fuck out of here and get paid."

"We're seeing this through." Valkyrie said sternly.

"I can hack his 'link, make it cluck like a chicken when he gets nuyen, and immediately send it right back." John offered.

"I don't think it'll be necessary, right?" Hunter asked, looking straight at Billy.

"Fuck." Billy muttered.

"Let's get going." Hunter said, picking up her Steyr.

John downed the last of his tea, having found it tastier than he really expected for a drink called 'tea'.

Billy grumbled all the way back to the chasm. There Valkyrie went first, levitating herself straight up.

With a blast of compressed air, Hunter sent her left hand flying upwards. When it looked like she had grabbed a hold of something solid she slung her Steyr and started walking her way up the chasm wall.

Like the last two times, Mina stepped onto John's feet and they began floating upwards.

"I wish I knew how you're doing this." John said softly.

"I'm levitating you." Mina said softly, looking upwards as they continued up.

Billy was the last to get to the top, still muttering obscenities under his breath. John wondered if he was the only one who wished the razorboy would just shut the fuck up.

Once again Billy took the lead, saying he could take on anything they might encounter. Glancing at Mina, John saw her give him a 'is he nuts?' kind of look. John made a winding motion with a finger pointed to the side of his head, and Mina giggled.

After a while the tunnel widened to about four meters. The walls were smoothed and the whole chamber was rather unremarkable looking. Almost ten meters away was a heavy looking metal door.

Hunter slowed as they entered the chamber, but Billy just strode right on ahead. Her caution turned out to be a life saver, John felt, as Billy was walking ahead and suddenly he and the floor disappeared from view!

"What happened?" asked Mina.

"Fuck!" yelled Billy. John thought he could hear the smashing of metal on metal.

Inching up carefully, John was able to get a good look down. Billy had fallen into a classic pit trap, complete with sharpened bits of metal at the bottom that was four meters down.

"Shit." cussed John when he realized that Billy looked completely unharmed in every way except his pride. The razorboy used his cybernetic hands to bash the various sharpened metal spikes. His clothing had not faired quite as well.

"Hang on, settle down, I'll get you out." Valkyrie said.

It must have been a levitation spell, John figured, as Billy started floating up into the air. He apparently did not like the feeling all too well, squirming about like a scruffed cat and cussing, all until he was none too gently dropped on the far side.

Getting across was not otherwise too difficult. There was a one meter wide walkway along the left side of the chamber where they went single file, with Valkyrie going last.

Before anyone could say anything, Billy muscled the door open.

"Try not to touch anything." Hunter advised as she stepped through.

"We won't." John said, with Mina nodding her agreement.

"Wasn't talking to you." Hunter added.

"Hey!" cried an indignant Billy.

The next chamber was also about ten meters long, and had a door at the far end. From both walls were about forty pipes, each roughly three centimeters across, jutting out from the walls. Strewn about the ground were a multitude of small bones. John could even feel a signal from several RFID tags in body bags at the far side of the chamber. The door at the far side had a plate above it and a rather prominent red button was on the wall next to the door.

"Weird place." commented Valkyrie as she stepped in, ducking through the human sized door.

Billy tried the door, shaking it vigorously despite it being quite obviously locked.

"Maybe this'll unlock it." commented Billy.

"Don't touch it!" Hunter yelled, but it was too late.

The door behind them slammed shut, with Valkyrie a split second too late to try and catch it. The plate above switched on, showing a prominent "45" in bright red LEDs. Right away it started counting down.

"Shit!" cussed Hunter. She slung her Steyr and went right to the button Billy had pressed, shoving the razor boy aside.

"Fuckin' smooth move, ex-lax." John said rather loudly.

"Like you know what the fuck it does." Billy returned.

"Check it for magic." Hunter said.

"I ain't a magician!" stated Billy.

"Master of the obvious you are." snipped John.

"I don't see you helping." growled Billy.

John looked up at the timer. It said "35".

"Do I look like a magician?" John yelled.

"Looks like there's an anchored spell." Valkyrie told them.

"Can you dispel it?" Hunter asked.

"Why not ask the genius?" Billy asked.

"I'm a hacker, not a magician, God damn it!" John yelled. He was seriously tempted to pull his Hatamoto II pistol out and use it on Billy. Was his head thick enough to resist a slug designed to blow a door off its hinges? Too bad the doors to their prison looked heavy enough to take the slug. Looking up at the timer, he saw it tick down to "30".

"I think it's too powerful." groaned Valkyrie.

Mina unleashed a primal scream, and when John turned to look back to see a an earth elemental appear. It stood easily past two meters, was almost as wide as it was tall, with a crest of shiny spikes that looked like short horns as well as many more smaller spikes on the shoulders, knees, and such, all giving it a vague appearance of a dirt demon. Did she just summon it?

"Destroy the door!" Mina yelled.

"What?" Billy asked before he was shoved aside by the elemental like a rag doll.

"Oh shit!" cussed Hunter, diving clear just in time to avoid a spray of clear liquid from the spirit's hand that sizzled when it hit the door.

Apparently perturbed by the door's resilience, the spirit redoubled its efforts. Everyone scrambled away as three streams of acid came from both hands and its mouth, hitting the door with a force greater than a fire hose. Thankfully the liquid seemed to dissipate before being splashed back too far. John watched nervously as the timer ticked below "20". Still the door persisted.

It was when the timer hit "15" that Hunter started yelling, "We've got a hole!"

Apparently satisfied its task was done, the demonic looking earth elemental stopped its attack and vanished.

Hunter was through the hole first, a neat tuck and roll bringing her up and ready with her Steyr.

John waited as Billy made a clumsy attempt to do the same, cussing as he hit his toe on the still slowly melting door.

Mina was next, having to be almost shoved ahead by John, and she quite gracefully managed a forward tumble that cleared the door. John was a little less graceful, but still better than Billy in clearing the door, with a grunt of discomfort as the Hatamoto crunched into his back.

Valkyrie was last through, having just managed to fit through the hole. They then continued on.

"You think that was really necessary?" Billy asked as they walked, now in step behind Hunter.

"You notice the animal bones in there?" John asked back.

"Let's just push on." Hunter said wearily.

"Just sayin'." Billy said.

"There was a pretty powerful offensive spell on that door." Valkyrie said, "Easily fatal."

"Bet it wasn't as offensive as Billy's stench." John said, waving a hand in front of his nose.

"Will you both shut up?" cried Hunter.

John kept his distance behind Billy. At least Mina was close to him, though she had a worried look on her face whenever he caught her looking at him.

It was not long until they reached another door. It was smaller, simpler than the last, with a basic handle for use. Billy was not in any rush to try and open the door.

"There's no magic on this one." Valkyrie told them.

Hunter positioned herself a step away from the door. "Open it." she told Billy.

"I ain't touching it." Billy declared.

"Fuck you. I'll do it." John said, stepping up to the door.

"On three, fling it open and get clear." Hunter said.

With a good grip on the door, John listened as Hunter counted. When she hit three he threw the door open and himself out of the line of fire.

"Clear." Hunter said, and she stepped in first.

The first room was a rather snug feeling bedroom and bath. Though it was three by four meters long, when Valkyrie stepped in it was feeling very cramped. Along the wall with the bathtub was a sink and toilet. It was even smaller than the fallout shelter John had lived in for a few months. It stank of rotting meat, compliments of a dead devil rat hanging from the ceiling, and the bathtub looked well stained with rust. John did his best to avoid looking at the toilet, the smell alone was enough to make him want to vomit.

"Don't suppose the next door's trapped?" asked Billy.

"Doesn't look like it." Valkyrie said.

"I doubt they will be. We're in his home." Hunter told them, opening the next door. The next room looked to be a mix of living room, office, and kitchen. It was also no cleaner than the previous room, with a stack of dirty dishes in the sink.

Hunter picked up an unfurled scroll from the table and after maybe two seconds she dropped it like it was the most toxic thing she had handled.

"What?" Billy asked.

"Whatever this crap is, it's written on human skin!" Hunter told them.

There was no warning as a large black dog came out at Hunter. She managed to get her Steyr in the way for the dog to bite. She screamed in panic as she tried to throw the dog off.

John could feel his heart leap into his throat. Before he realized it he had pulled a firearm and fired.

The room reverberated from the loud explosion, and John had found himself thrown to the ground from the gun's powerful recoil.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Billy. John noticed the razorboy was regaining his composure.

Even Valkyrie had been cringing.

Accepting Mina's help, John managed to regain his footing.

"What the fuck was that?" Hunter asked, just now managing to pry the remainder of the dog's jaws off of her assault rifle. The back third of the dog's head was just gone, and its headless body lay on the floor, its dark blood spilling out onto the already grossly dirty floor.

John looked down at the gun he was holding. Only now did he realize it was not a Predator or his Warhawk he had pulled, but the Hatamoto II. "Uh, a lock shock shotgun round?" John said.

"What?" Hunter asked darkly.

Popping the breech on the Hatamoto II, John pulled a shell from a pocket to reload the gun. With a flick of the wrist the shotgun snapped shut.

The next thing John knew his skin was feeling like it was tingling all over, then his whole body was wracked with pain. It felt like he screamed out in pain, though he could not hear himself making any noise from the crackling in his ears. His whole body was in pain and every movement made it worse.

"Don't try to move." he heard someone say. All he could see was a blur of colors as his head spun.

"He's still alive after that?" someone else said. It sounded like Billy.

"Barely." the first voice said. John thought it was Valkyrie who was closest to him. "Kid's got some fortitude to take a hit like that."

"Didn't seem to affect the girl much." remarked Billy.

"She is a magician." Valkyrie said, "And looks like she's good at counterspelling, too."

Looking the others over as his vision began to clear, John figured he had missed out on most of a fight. Feeling a bit better he tried to stand. He accepted Mina's and Hunter's help in regaining his feet.

Billy by no means looked pleased, and like he had been hit by a cattle prod several times. He was also carrying a man that looked like was one of the first explorers. John could not tell who, partly because his vision would occasionally blur.

Hunter did not look much better, but less pissed off than the razorboy. The whole action and barrel of her Steyr shimmered in his thermographic vision.

Only the magicians seemed to have fared off the best. Both Valkyrie and Mina were apparently well versed in deflecting spells. Valkyrie held a rather dirty looking man over one shoulder.

"What…" John started to say just before his legs gave out on him. Mina fell with him, but with her help they only hit their knees rather than John finding out what the grungy looking floor tasted like.

"The hellhound was Enrico's pet." Valkyrie explained, bouncing the dirty man on her shoulder once. He wore a dark robe and his long black hair was an absolute mess. "Pissed him off when you killed it."

Planting a foot like it was the trunk of an oak, John pushed himself back up to stand. If only his foot had been like that oak as half way up he completely lost all of his strength. This time he did hit the floor, his whole body wracked with pain and not because Mina had landed on him.

"What the fuck's …" he heard Billy say, his voice becoming indistinct.

"Hell if I know." Hunter answered.

"You okay?" Mina asked softly while the adults talked. It sounded like she was really concerned.

"I feel like… I got run… over by… a steamroller." John said between panting breaths. Literally every extremity hurt, even his toes and fingers and more that John would not admit to anyone. Despite the agonizing pain he found he was having a hard time seeing anything again.

"… okay?" he thought he heard Hunter say.

"Huh?" John asked.

"Are you okay?" Hunter asked slowly.

"Ow." John groaned.

"C'mon." Hunter said, pulling John to his feet, "Let's see if we can get going." She hefted what looked like an improvised sack over one shoulder.

"What's in that?" John asked.

"What's left of the rest of the team." Hunter said solemnly.

John felt sick to his stomach. Especially when he realized it was just their heads that were in the sack. He figured he did not want to know where the rest of them were.

With help from Mina, John found he could walk. It was slow going at first, but as the minutes passed, and the further they got in the tunnels away from the wizard's hovel, the better he was starting to feel. Maybe it was something to do with the stench of rotting meat and more that was affecting him. Figuring this, John felt rather embarrassed that he needed a girl's help to walk.

After crossing the chasm, being levitated by Mina like before, Hunter told that Valkyrie figured Enrico had thrown a second spell within the lightning bolt that had lit him up like a Christmas tree. It was that second spell, she reasoned, that had nearly killed him. Mina had cast a healing spell on him just after the second time he passed out.

John had no idea why, but the trip back out seemed to pass by faster. Was it because other threats had been wiped out? Maybe it was because Mina was at his side, practically helping him all the way.

Floating over the chasm was slower this them than the times before. Mina also looked al little green as she held her spell.

They caught up to Billy and Valkyrie where Miao had been found, and Valkyrie was helping Billy balance an explorer on either arm.

"Fuckin' naga just left." Billy grumbled.

"He did wait for us." Valkyrie corrected, "He just left as soon as we came 'round the corner."

John opted to believe Valkyrie. Especially when it looked like Miao was at least half capable of walking.

The waterfall was, as best as John would describe it, a small cluster fuck.

Mina was looking a little better, and she levitated John back up the same way, with her standing on his feet. It was slow going still, and it looked like she was as glad as John was at the chance to sit and rest while the others worked out bringing the other three men up. It was also nice to feel the matrix again, though weak and just at the edge of his senses. It was like trying to look at something out of the corner of your eye, only to find it disappeared when you look straight at it. The itchiness of his skin was also slowly fading away.

Ultimately Hunter came up with one of the explorers on her right shoulder. John and Mina did have to help a little to pull him to safety. Hunter then dropped her hand down and hoisted the sack up.

Valkyrie was next, with the other explorer and Enrico under her arms.

Unsurprisingly Billy was last, cussing as he pulled himself over the ledge. John was feeling too sore and tired to say anything.

They continued walking on, with Billy leading.

They were almost to the exit, Billy walking straight on when Valkyrie stopped.

"Where's the alligator?" Valkyrie asked.

"Who cares?" Billy asked over his shoulder.

"I do." Hunter said, "And you're going the wrong way!"

"Well someone should've put some fucking directions down." Billy grumbled as he turned around.

The pool where the alligator had come from exploded as something came blasting out. Whatever it was plowed itself into John and Mina, roaring.

"Bug!" he heard Hunter yell. He really did not care what it was as John and Mina were scrambling out from underneath it. About all he could see was black and pale green that was dangerously big and too close.

It roared, spinning to face someone. John screamed in pain as a black chitinous foot came crashing down on his leg.

Brrrt went Hunter's assault rifle, and the creature spun around. John half drug himself, was half pulled, out from underneath the creature.

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" John heard Billy yell, and as he was lifted to his feet he got a good look at what it was.

By the bullet holes in its side John figured it was the alligator they had encountered on their way down. That's where the similarities ended, as the alligator now had a glossy black carapace down the length of its back, its back left and front right legs were replaced with a pair of insect legs each, a pair of spike like horns protruded from above its eyes and a third straight up from the end of its snout. Its eyes were also bright red compound eyes, like what you would see in a bad horror movie about giant bugs.

Billy was trying repeatedly to cut into the beetle-alligator hybrid with his spurs. Its hide repelled the razor sharp blades like they were nothing. Hunter was unloading the magazine of her Steyr into its face. Most of the bullets bounced off its armored and scaly hide.

John pulled his Hatamoto and fired. The lock shock shell fragmented against the beast's hide with no effect.

"How the fuck do we kill this fucker?" yelled Billy as he leaped clear of its snapping jaws.

"Just keep distracting it!" Hunter yelled back. John guessed she was loading another magazine into her gun.

The distraction worked too well. The alligator-bug-thing spun on Billy and with a powerful chomp of its jaws it got hold of his right arm below the elbow.

Mina and Valkyrie tried tag teaming it with spells. Frost and ice flew from Valkyrie's hand while Mina tried burning it with fire. The elements washed over its hide like water off a duck's back.

"What the fuck is this thing?" yelled Valkyrie so she could be heard over the noise of Hunter's assault rifle.

"Bug spirit!" Hunter yelled back between bursts of fire. "Possessed the 'gator's body!"

"Spirit?" Mina yelled.

John saw Mina and Valkyrie look at each other briefly, like they were sharing an idea in the moment.

"Fuckin' do something!" Billy yelled, trying to pry open the alligator's mouth.

From the passage Billy had walked down just a little bit ago came a large Viking warrior, running a spear through the creature's hide. Before it roared in pain it spun hard to face the new aggressor, tearing Billy's cybernetic arm from the stump.

Billy was about to rush back in with his one good arm when he was pulled off to the side.

Mina looked like a blazing star for an instant. From the nimbus of bright flame that surrounded her came a demon of fire. The fire elemental stood its ground and side-by-side with Mina they unleashed torrents of flame. The fire elemental proved the stronger as Mina dropped to one knee, her fire magic proving virtually ineffectual. John was at her side right away.

The Viking and demon both pressed their attacks, and together they were able to kill it. The smell of burning meat was overwhelming. With their tasks done they disappeared.

"God damn fucking asshole." swore Billy as he wrenched the remains of his cybernetic arm from the dead reptile.

"Now just what the hell was that?" asked John.

"Bug spirit." Hunter said with a grunt. "They can't materialize on their own, so they possess a body instead. They're a bitch to put down."

"Like those things in Chicago in '55?" John asked.

"Yup." answered Hunter, "Now let's get out of here, okay?"

Looking quite worn out, Valkyrie had to use a spell to levitate Enrico's body while she carried the other two out.

John could not care less at the moment as it was now his turn to help Mina out of the tunnels.

The light was quite bright as they emerged, and John was glad his goggles darkened to protect his eyes.

"You were gone for so long." Mr. Johnson said. It looked like he and his two bodyguards had waited the whole time for John and the others to return.

"We ran into a lot of problems down there." Hunter said. She was careful with the sack as she sat it down.

With help from Mr. Johnson's bodyguards, Valkyrie was able to lie the two explorers down.

"There's only two. Where are the others?" asked Mr. Johnson.

"What's left of their remains are in there." Hunter said, pointing to the sack.

Mr. Johnson tentatively looked into the sack, and quickly closed it again. Looking rather pale, he said, "Well, guess I ought to pay you." he said.

John was expecting a funds transfer, but instead Mr. Johnson handed each of them two credsticks. Checking both of them, John found that each held five thousand nuyen.

"Well, can't say it's been fun." grumbled Billy as he walked off, the remains of his busted cybernetic arm in his other hand.

"Just gonna let him walk like that?" Hunter asked once Billy had rounded a corner and was out of sight.

"I'm not gonna let him get rewarded for being an asshole." Valkyrie said. "Besides, didn't we cut him out of a share of loot from our second hit on RMD?" she asked back.

"True." Hunter admitted.

"What're you talking about?" John asked.

The women only looked at each other before Hunter said, "Best if you just come with us."

Enrico, still unconscious, was securely strapped into the passenger seat of Valkyrie's pickup before they drove off. Mr. Johnson said nothing, asked nothing at all about Enrico. John figured the man was not only being smart, but focusing his priorities on the surviving two members of his spelunking team, and what he was going to tell the families of the five who had died.

As they were on their way, John was glad that Hunter asked him for a coyote trail into the UCAS sector. Half an hour later they were back on the surface in the UCAS sector, and Valkyrie led the way again. To where he had no idea.

About all John was immediately concerned about was how tired and worn looking Mina was, her grip not as tight as it had been before.

Their destination was a large office like looking building. Above large glass doors was a logo of the world with a western styled dragon perched behind it, its wings hung low and looking like it was going to wrap the Earth in them, and its tail dangled down past the south pole. Only North, Central, and part of South America were visible.

But it was not the front doors that was their destination. Slowly, like it was unfamiliar territory for Valkyrie, she pulled around to the back of the building.

Several people in suits were waiting. They also had a containment box, the kind you would think a psychopath would be put into for transport.

"Are we turning him over to these guys?" John asked as he parked next to Valkyrie's truck. He and Mina both slowly dismounted his Katana-11, but then sat back down on the motorcycle's seat.

"Not like they're gonna kill him." Hunter said as she pulled her helmet off.

"Which one of you is Hunter?" asked one of the suits. He was dressed rather sharply, human, and gave John the feel like he was talking to a weasel or a lawyer.

"I am." Hunter said.

"We've got everything ready, provided he proves to be what you say he is." the suit said.

John had questions, but kept his mouth shut.

"Enrico Trebol." Hunter said, and John noticed that two people in lab coats were pulling Enrico out of Valkyrie's truck. "Formerly of Aztlan before Ghostwalker came in. Got a witness that says he was forgotten when Aztlan got kicked out."

One of the lab coats seemed to examine Enrico closely. After a little while he gave a thumbs up.

"Looks like everything's in order, then." the suit said, handing Hunter four credsticks.

"You okay?" John asked Mina, who had slumped against his side again.

"Tired." she mumbled.

Valkyrie was right at their side right away. Even kneeling she was an imposing person. John had no idea what she was doing as she looked Mina up and down very carefully.

"Anything?" Hunter asked.

"I'm not seeing it." Valkyrie said.

"What is it?" the suit asked.

"We had a run in with a bug." Hunter said, "Loner. Really nasty. Possessed a dead alligator to materialize."

The suit waved one of the lab coat guys over. He took seemed to scrutinize Mina very carefully, including shining a light in her eyes. "Doesn't look like something's trying to take possession of her."

"Fuck the bug. Burned it good." Mina muttered.

"Good sign." Valkyrie said.

"What?" John asked.

"Insect spirits can't easily possess live people without their consent." the suit said. "If she's got that attitude towards a bug then it's not likely one can take over."

"Hope she's not too against bugs." Hunter said, "Considering our last job I think 'Firefly' is a good name for her."

"Sure it's a good name?" the suit asked.

"Knew a hacker that called herself Crystal Spider." Hunter said, "Persona looked like her name."

"Okay." Mina said softly.

"Well then, since everything is in order, nice doing business with you folks." the suit said. He left, walking with the lab coats into the building.

"I think she's just tired." Valkyrie said, taking one last look at Mina. "Might've put a little much into that last spell she did."

Tiredly Mina swung her leg back over the motorcycle and John climbed on.

"Hey, before you go, these are for both of you." Hunter said, slipping John two of the credsticks the suit had given her. "Just don't go crazy with it, okay?"

"Okay." John said, feeling almost as tired as Mina looked, pocketing the credsticks with his others.

Mina's grip was just as weak as before as they drove home. She needed help as John walked her to her room.

It was not until John had collapsed back onto his own pitiful excuse of a bed when he pulled out one of the two credsticks Hunter had given him. He almost wet himself when he saw a balance of two hundred, fifty thousand nuyen. Checking the other one, he found the same amount.

He was sure Mina was going to need to spend a fair amount to set up her lodge, or whatever it was called. He would have to help make some calls.

But that would have to wait till later. Right now, John only wanted to sleep.


	10. Run 10 : Twist And Insult

Run 10 : Twist And Insult (based on the mission written by Stephen McQuillan)

John was glad to be out of the warehouse. Being around so many Russians that stank of vodka and who knew what else was starting to make him gag. Mina had not been too keen on staying there for too long either. With their private network connection, she had pointed out one particular Russian who had given her the creeps. At least he had managed to convince her not to cast any fire spells at him.

And it was not like she was dressed in any sexy way, with loose blue jeans, a rose pink tee-shirt with part of a five pointed star lined in gray at the bottom, and the long sleeves of her new form-fitting body armor covering the rest of her arms. That, and with her relatively short cut hair she still could have been mistake for a boy.

At least their delivery job for the Vory had been easy. The pay certainly reflected it, though while five thousand nuyen was well more than the first of John's jobs in Denver, Billy kept whining about it. He certainly had no right to, John figured, as Billy had been nothing but dead weight the whole time.

"At least the fucker's could've paid us better." muttered Billy as they walked towards their vehicles. For not the first time did he swing his now fully cybernetic right arm around as if he was working out a kink in his shoulder. It was relatively impossible to tell underneath his black leather jacket, but Billy had bragged about his new arm along with bitched about its cost.

"Would you just shut up about it already?" asked Valkyrie.

"No." returned Billy.

"_You sure I can__'__t burn his ass?_" Mina asked. She seemed so much more talkative to John across their private connection, but even still at times seemed to be unnervingly quiet. John was still trying to figure this out.

"_Pretty sure._" John answered her, grinning at the thought. What he sent to her by thought she would hear in her new headphones that wrapped over her ears and connected behind her head. They included a set of trodes, concealed into her red hair, so she could think what she wanted to say to John whenever she wanted.

Hunter stopped before they reached their vehicles. Before anyone could ask a woman stepped out from the shadows. She had dark eyes and long wavy brown hair.

"You are the men who work for Kirillov? Help me, I need protection." she said in a heavy Russian accent.

"What is it?" Hunter asked.

"Shit." cussed Billy.

She flinched at the sudden sound of shouting from inside the warehouse. John could not even make out the words, but having heard enough Russian already knew that someone was rather pissed off.

"Please, help me. Meet me soon." she said.

"What help do you need?" pressed Hunter.

"Me and my boyfriend are in danger." she said, "We need protection until morning." With that she ran off down an alleyway.

"Bitch." Billy said.

"I know you are, but what am I?" chided Mina.

John grinned.

"She sent me a hundred nuyen and an address. I think her name's Maria." Hunter told them.

"I think we should check it out."

"Fuck her if she can't pay us properly." Billy said.

"_Is he serious?_" Mina asked.

"Bet you'd like that." John said. "_If it__'__s about money, yeah._" he told Mina.

"Like you'd know what to do." challenged Billy.

"Like you've got the tool." John returned.

"Boys! Easy!" cried Hunter.

"Good, you's all here." a boy said from behind.

Billy spun about, crouching down in a mock martial artists' stance with his arm blades extended. Knowing Billy, he would claim it was a legitimate stance.

"Would you settle the fuck down?" asked Hunter.

Behind them was one of the lackeys John had seen outside when they arrived. Older than John by a few years, but still younger than the others. Maybe more emotionally mature than Billy, but sadly reeked almost as bad. He was also someone who made Mina a little nervous.

"The boss has some more work for you, go inside." the errand runner told them.

Mina groaned. John was interested in going home to relax.

"Well, let's at least go hear what he has to say." Hunter said.

Inside several large men were now driving forklifts loaded down with crates. John kept a sharp eye out as it looked like any one of them would sooner run him down as look at him. Mina kept herself close to him.

Five meters up on a catwalk was Nikolai Kirillov, the man they had just made a delivery for. Muscular and scarred, he bore marks on his arms and face of a person who had fought his way to the top through brute force and unadulterated rage. Where Billy tried to be scary, Nikolai was scary without trying.

"I have a job for you." he told them.

"Why not come on down 'n talk to us?" asked Billy.

"Shut it." hushed Hunter, "We're listening."

"I want you to impress a gang into the service of the Vory." Nikolai said. "If they disagree, kill them as publicly and messily as possible."

"Why the fuck for?" Billy asked.

"You wouldn't get a message if it sat on your face and took a shit." John said.

"Smart boy." Nikolai said. "I'll pay you all one thousand now, and six thousand when the job is done."

"Seven thousand?" asked Billy.

"_Is he always like this?_" Mina asked.

John sighed. "_Yeah._" he answered.

"Please don't tell us you're gonna try and ask for more." Hunter said, "You know it was your choice to blow your wad on a whole new arm, not ours."

John shivered. He could not quite understand the willingness to chop off perfectly good body parts for chrome.

"Forget what he says, I'm in." Valkyrie said.

Mina nodded.

"So're we." John said, alternatively pointing to himself and Mina.

"So am I." added Hunter.

"Fuck, okay." relented Billy.

Someone forwarded them their retainer for Nikolai.

"So where the fuck do we go?" asked Billy.

"Headquarters for the Three Kings, apparently." Hunter said.

"Exactly." Nikolai said.

John was familiar with the Three Kings, a sub gang of the Fronts, a gang who controlled about a third of the territory of the Warrens. "Great, more time in the Warrens." John said.

"Yeah, I don't like it either." Hunter said.

"Just get them to join, or kill them." Nikolai told them. "You can go now."

John followed Hunter as they left the warehouse.

"A lot of charm, that one." commented Valkyrie.

"So we're hangin' out longer here?" John asked.

"Got a problem with that?" Billy asked.

"Yeah, I do." John said, "I think we'll need more firepower."

"Firepower, shmire-power." Billy said, "I'm all we need for protection."

"Yeah, like that beetle-gator thing last week?" Valkyrie asked. "Really nice job with that."

"Just shut the fuck up." Billy muttered.

"Just what were you thinking of?" Hunter asked John.

"Well, remember those drones I took last month?" John asked, running two fingers over his right ear. "Well, I got 'em cleaned up and all."

Hunter looked like she thought about it. "Alright. Meet us here." Hunter said, forwarding him an address in the warrens. "How long'll it take you?"

"Maybe half an hour." John said.

"Go."

John grinned as he ran for his motorcycle. Mina was right behind him, hanging on tight as John gunned the Katana-11's powerful turbocharged engine.

The advantage of racing in the Aurora Warrens was that it was the kind of place where Knight Errant or Lone Star did not patrol at random, and usually did not enter at all. That meant that the surviving posted speed limit signs were more suggestions than law.

South Chambers Road was one of the better streets, with an easy six kilometer straight stretch of road relatively clear of debris, and one of the few times John really got to push his motorcycle to the limit.

Despite the Friday evening, the road was relatively clear of traffic. For the Warrens, this was not quite so uncommon. Mina's grip around his waist tightened as he hit the accelerator hard.

Once past Alameda Parkway, the road marking the northern border of the Warrens, John slowed a little. "_Hang on!_" he told Mina as he drove off the road just before the bridge over East Tollgate Creek, gunning the engine as they went off road and crossed under the bridge. The motorcycle's suspension was not the best for off road, but the smart tires that John had installed were great at keeping traction and smoothing out the ride at the same time.

After over a kilometer of off road racing they reached home. Mina waited outside on the Katana-11 while John woke the Doberman drones. In a minute they were booted up and connected straight to John's mind with a dynamic encryption.

The race back was not quite as fast as it could have been, but on inner city streets pushing close to ninety kilometers an hour was still fast. This was the fastest the drones could run safely.

John took close to the same off road path back to South Chambers, and from there it was almost nine kilometers straight south to the address Hunter had given him.

The others were waiting at the turnoff from South Chambers before the trip into a suburban complex.

"You really fixed 'em up." remarked Hunter when she saw the drones.

John grinned as he and the Dobermans took up the rear as Hunter led them in.

Street signs were either painted over or just stolen, making navigation that way next to impossible. At least off road through what were likely people's yards was an option.

Hunter pulled up to an apartment building and parked her motorcycle. The building itself had peeling avocado green paint, and it looked like it might have been brown a few decades back. It was rundown and looked like it had been abandoned when the UCAS decided to cut the utilities to the Warrens. At several highly visible places the building had been tagged with three golden crowns in a circle. It was clearly marked as the Three Kings.

Hunter waited for the others to gather at the door. "Set those to guard our rigs." she said before knocking.

"Just what are those armed with?" Billy asked.

"An Ares MP-LMG with an underslung Antioch-2 grenade launcher. Lots of boom-boom." he said.

"Come in." came a baritone male voice.

Inside were two people on folding chairs, sitting at a card table. There were a few more card tables with several folding chairs. The rest of the decor looked as old and decrepit as the outside of the building, and the air smelled stale with traces of old beer and body odor.

The man stood, behind him the same woman who had asked them for help earlier. He was almost as tall as Billy but not as heavily built. He had short cropped dark hair and chocolate brown eyes. If it were based on eye color alone, John would have guessed he and Mina were related.

"My name's Tony." he said, introducing himself, shaking hands with everyone. Only Billy refused. "I'm glad you came." The woman also stood, keeping behind Tony.

"Not like we all wanted to." muttered Billy.

"Shut it." Valkyrie muttered back.

This apparently was the address the woman had given, not the headquarters that Nikolai had given to Hunter.

"We'd like to ask you for protection." Tony said, "Just until morning. We can pay you for your troubles, but we don't have much. We're looking to leave, but I've gotta take care of some things first."

"Babysitting, shit." muttered Billy.

"So you're looking to leave the gang?" asked Hunter.

"Thought it'd be obvious." John said to Billy. He glanced at the two AROs that showed the sensor readouts from the Dobermans. Everything looked okay so far.

"I am." Tony said, "I've been their leader for about a week now." He looked like he was about to be sick.

"So you want protection from the Three Kings while you straighten out their leadership, all before you leave Denver." Hunter said.

"That's about it." Tony said.

"_She looks really nervous. Like she__'__s hiding something._" Mina sent to John.

"Why the protection?" Hunter asked.

"Our leader, Johnny, was killed about a week ago." Tony said, "No one knows who did it, but the rest of the Three Kings wants revenge."

"Can't say I blame you when the last leader got shot in the back fifteen times." Hunter said.

John looked at her, and apparently so did everyone else.

"I made a call before we came." Hunter told them.

John could see it in the woman. Her eyes kept darting about and she fidgeted with her fingers.

"We can pay you forty-nine hundred more nuyen." Tony continued. "I… I just want out of this life. But I can't just leave the Kings."

"Five thousand each? Okay." Billy said.

Hunter rolled her eyes. "If we split it evenly that's only one thousand." she corrected.

"Fuck. Fucking peanuts." cussed Billy. He obviously was more interested in the bottom nuyen than trying to help people.

"Hey, uh, what's wrong?" John asked, looking at the woman. "Ya look nervous."

"Just nerves." she said.

"_She__'__s lying._" Mina told John.

"You are hiding something." Valkyrie said, "I can see it in your aura."

Stepping back, she collapsed back into her folding chair. It creaked with the sudden weight, and it looked like she was about to break down into tears.

"I killed Johnny!" she suddenly blurted out.

John's eyes went wide, and a moment later he realized his mouth was hanging open. Through their wireless connection he got a wordless mix of shock and more as Mina likely wanted to tell him something, but could not find the words. It was peculiar how he got these sensations in the first place.

Shocked, Tony had just enough wits about him to also sit down.

"I knew killing Johnny would make Tony the leader." she said, fighting back the tears, "I know my father wants to recruit gangers, and this way he would be happy, Tony and I could be together, and Tony could lead rather than some bojevik outsider."

"You killed my friend?" Tony asked, still in shock.

"Yes!" she cried, practically weeping. "I… I didn't know…"

No one said anything for quite a while. Looking to the others John saw Billy had a dumb expression, like he was trying to figure out the drama of a soap opera from the middle of an episode. Hunter and Valkyrie both had looks of concern, though John could not determine if it was for Tony and his girlfriend or what.

"Maria, your father…?" Tony started to ask.

"He is Nikolai Kirillov." she, Maria admitted.

"Oh shit." groaned Hunter.

"How bad is it?" Valkyrie asked.

"He's been on all of the street gangs in the Warrens. Got a 'do or die' attitude towards getting them to join." Hunter told them. "The Kings aren't his first."

John could feel Mina step closer to him.

"I'm scared of what my father would do if he knew what I was doing." Maria continued. "He thinks I have spent too much time with… riffraff, and wants me to marry well. He assigned a smotrityel… a…"

"Watcher." Valkyrie translated.

"A watcher. I am trying to be unnoticed." Maria told them.

"Great." sighed Hunter.

"What's so great about it?" asked Billy.

"You have any idea just how much shit we're in?" Hunter asked back. When Billy gave the closest thing to a blank expression he could, she said, "We've got a runaway Vory princess and a gang leader who's looking to run away himself."

"Fuck, let's just kill 'em and be done with it." Billy said.

"What?" cried Maria.

"Will you ever learn to shut up?" Valkyrie asked.

"So you know why we're here, right, Maria?" Hunter asked her.

Maria nodded.

"Bet you didn't know your father also hired us to kill the Three Kings if they won't join the Vory." Hunter told them.

"No, we won't. We can't." Tony said, slumping deeper in his own chair. "We can't…" he said softly.

"You are the leader, and you've got a choice ahead of you." Hunter told him.

"The… The Kings can stand on their own." Tony said, "They can call on the Fronts for help."

"They won't be able to." Maria said, "My father has the men and firepower. The Fronts will not be able to help."

"She's right." John added, "I had problems with a small gang a month ago. Me, her," he pointed to Hunter, "and two drones with submachine guns took care of it in an hour." That reminded him to check their sensor feeds again, and saw nothing unusual. Even the drones themselves had nothing special noted.

Tony looked at John in disbelief.

"They're outside right now, the drones." John said, "They got machineguns and grenades now, and a shit load of bullets. If me and her could do it, you think the Fronts got a chance to help ya?"

"And even if you do escape, the Vory have a long reach." Hunter told Tony, "Even if we do help you and you get out of Denver they'll be able to track you down. Then they'll track us down for helping you. It's that or we kill you now and talk to the rest of the Kings."

"_We__'__re not helping them leave?_" Mina asked.

"_Guess not._" John told her.

"And if they're not willing to join the Vory, we'll have to kill them." Valkyrie added.

"_I don__'__t really wanna kill them._" Mina said sadly.

Deep down John did not really want to either. Billy grinned at the mention of slaughtering members of the Three Kings.

"She is right." Maria said, looking at the floor, "If we stay, and join the Vory, my father can provide protection for us and the Three Kings. He will hunt us down if we leave."

"We'll protect you, but only as long as you're gonna join the Vory." Hunter said, "That means all of the Three Kings. The Vory can outfit you better as well."

"What about the Fronts?" Tony asked, "Can we just leave them? They won't like it."

"Fuck." sighed John. "You think you can please everybody?" he asked.

"You'll never be able to." Hunter said, "No matter how hard you try you're going to piss off somebody somehow. Best to grow a pair, buck up, and start making the hard decisions."

Tony sighed heavily. "Alright, we'll side with the Vory. But I'll need to talk to the rest of them. I want what's best for them." he said. "Not all will come with."

"I think Nikolai may be okay with that, as long as most of the gang comes over." Valkyrie said.

"Think your father would let Tony stay in charge?" Hunter asked.

"As long as the there are not any problems with his leadership, I am sure." Maria told them.

"Now Maria, when we do talk with the others, you don't mention what you did to Johnny, okay?" Hunter asked. "You let that slip and we're all fucked."

Maria nodded, saying nothing.

"Any questions?" Hunter asked.

"Uh, what about big mouth?" John asked, pointing at Billy.

"Right." sighed Hunter, "You keep your fucking mouth shut, too." she told the razorboy. "If you do I'll make sure to fuck you over myself."

Surprisingly enough, Billy did not grin or try to make some remark about getting fucked by Hunter.

"Why should we worry…" Tony started to say.

"He almost fucked a job for us last month." John butted in, "Blabbed to the wrong hooker and almost got us fucked up the ass in the end."

"_Wow._" Mina sent to him.

"She's not a hooker!" cried Billy.

"If ya paid her for sex, she's a hooker! Plain and simple!" John told Billy.

Billy clamped his mouth shut.

"Anything more? Good. Then let's get going." said Hunter.

Despite the scent of pollution in the air, it felt refreshing to be outside again. Something about the freshness over the stale taste of the air inside. Even the tang of concrete felt nice.

Billy was certainly miffed as he got back into Valkyrie's truck. Tony had his own motorcycle, a not too healthy sounding Suzuki Mirage. John did catch Tony's surprised look when he saw the Doberman drones and their mounted weapons.

Tony led them to the Three Kings headquarters and safehouse, deeper into their territory. And deeper into the Warrens than John was already liking.

When they got there, in front of the building was a fight. Two gangers were rolling in the street trying to grapple and punch each other while others held the rest back. John figured this was to keep the fight between the two, especially when two of the gangers held their hands up to stop them.

"We don't have time for this." Hunter said, "Cypher, put those drones to cover the Kings.

John gave the drones their order, with each one set to hose half of the gang with a wide spread of bullets as soon as he gave the command.

Once the drones were in position, Hunter pulled a Predator IV out from inside her leather jacket and shot two rounds into the road ahead, intentionally missing any of the Three Kings.

The fighting came to an abrupt halt, and so Hunter holstered her pistol.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" asked one of the Kings on their left.

"She's with me." Tony said, dismounting his motorcycle and stepping up. "We're here to talk about some changes."

"Like you selling us out?" asked another King from the left.

"Tony wouldn't do that to us!" yelled a King from the right, "He's part of the family."

"And you oughtta know it's the best of the Kings I want." Tony said.

John hoped Tony had the balls to keep his conviction. It felt like things could shatter at any moment.

"You only want what's best for your cock!" yelled a King from the left, "You're so sweet on that Russian whore you don't know the fuck is going on!" This was met with several cheers of agreement.

"She's got nothing to do with this!" Tony yelled back.

John looked at the others. Hunter was almost impossible to read, her stone cold expression one of intent study as she looked at the Three Kings. Billy's was one more of excitement, probably hoping a fight would break out. Valkyrie's fingers twitched like she was figuring what magic to cast or spirit to summon. A quick glance at Mina showed she was more afraid of what might happen.

Tony continued talking with the rest of his gang. John could not get a gauge on how things were going to turn out. Even with the mention of protection and equipment from the Vory, the Three Kings were still split between solidarity and becoming part of the Fronts again.

Hunter stepped over to John. "This isn't going well." she said, "We need to change tactics fast. They're all gonna end up dead at this rate."

"What've you got in mind?" John asked.

"Have your drones shoot a five round burst over their heads. Maybe the threat of force will help."

John sent the order to the Doberman drones. Flawlessly they aimed their MP-LMGs high and loosed a short burst. This brought a deadly silence to everyone.

"Maybe you chose to forget something." Hunter called out, "The Vory want you to join them. They can give you better armor, guns, and other resources than the Fronts ever could."

"And have that Russian whore dragging Tony around by the balls?" asked one of the Kings on the right.

"Cypher, line 'em up." Hunter said.

Gesturing with his fingers spread wide, John lowered his hands. In synch the Dobermans leveled their machine guns on the Three Kings, readying to lay down covering fire once more. Some of the gangers looked nervous. John figured those that weren't scared were more clueless about the danger they were in as the Dobermans noted their targets.

"The Vory won't take 'No' for an answer." Hunter continued, making John's heart beat wildly in his chest. "If you tell them 'No', you will get wiped out. If you're lucky, your families will be spared."

"You and what army?" asked a King from the left. He sounded like he was a bit in the back.

"Cypher, give 'em a rundown." Hunter said, her voice inspiring some confidence.

John took a deep breath before starting. "Meet Rumble and Frenzy." he said loudly, pointing to the Dobermans, his heart pounding like crazy, "They've both got an Ares MP-LMG." saying the letters slowly to make sure the Three Kings would get them all. "At full auto that's a hundred rounds a minute, and they're loaded with explosive bullets. And they've got a mess of explosive grenades to throw at you, too. And the software to shot you in the face and make it come out your ass!"

Some of the gangers actually looked intimidated. But then, who that was not armored would not be when looking at the business end of a loaded machinegun.

"They've got the firepower." Tony said a little more softly. "I don't want 'em to use it. I don't want the Vory to use what they've got against us."

"Then we'll go to the Fronts!" yelled one of the Kings.

"They don't have the resources the Vory have!" said Hunter rather loudly. "What have they got? Submachine guns with thirty round mags? If the Vory's even got a fraction what Cypher's got they'll come down with machineguns with five hundred round belts!"

"If you side with the Fronts, then they too will become targets." Valkyrie added.

Whether or not there was more to say did not matter as a blaring horn. Coming up the street was a rust and blue colored pickup truck. It bottomed out once when it hit a particularly bad pothole, but kept barreling towards them. It screeched to a halt, almost non-existent brake pads locking down as the Conestoga Dustdevil skidded on almost bald tires to a stop.

Two gangers got out, and apparently were in the middle of a heated argument as they were yelling at each other. John managed to gather something about talking to cops and a shooting.

"What happened?" Tony asked as he rushed up to the truck.

"Kev was shot talking to the popo." one of them said. "He's in the back right now."

"Valkyrie, check him out!" ordered Hunter as she went to her motorcycle.

They made way for the large fomori woman. John could only imagine what it might have looked like to see her shoving the two aside.

"C'mon Mike, Star's just hasslin' him." the other said.

Hunter worked her way by with a med kit. She smoothly climbed into the truck's bed.

"Would ya just stop suckin' up to him, Andrew?" asked Mike.

"Billy, get your ass over here!" ordered Hunter, waving him over.

"I don't come to a finger." Billy returned, standing where he was by the vehicles.

"How 'bout a fist?" asked John. "She's got a wicked left." To Mina he sent, "_First time he really bitched about money she used her grapple hand to punch him in the nose, then grab his balls in a vice grip._"

Mina giggled.

Grumbling, Billy walked over to where Kev was lying on the ground.

"If anyone tries to hurt Kev, you hurt them." Hunter ordered, not looking up from whatever she was doing at Kev's side.

"Is he gonna make it?" Tony asked.

"Why should you care?" asked Mike, "He's Star scum."

"Why shouldn't I?" Tony snapped back.

"I think he's gonna make it." Hunter told them, still working on Kev. Valkyrie stood, giving the closer gangers a stern look.

"Maybe this wouldn't've happened if we were with the Vory." mused Tony.

"What the fuck are you saying?" exclaimed Mike.

"You can't be serious?" added Andrew.

"You see those kids and those drones over there?" asked Hunter, glancing up at Mike, then Andrew.

John waved at them when they looked his way.

"The machineguns those two drones have are why no one's trying to kill each other." Hunter explained, "First sign of a fight and it's a major cluster fuck. And it's a safe bet that the Vory can bring more firepower than what we've got."

John made sure that Hunter and Valkyrie were on both of the Doberman's safe list if he ever had to tell them to start shooting. After a moment's consideration, he added Billy.

"What about this Star pig?" asked Mike.

"Did you even check him?" Tony asked back. "If he's really one of 'em then where's his badge?"

Hunter leaned back while Mike climbed into the truck's bed and frisked the unconscious Kev. He looked disheartened when he came up empty.

"So looks like Andrew's right." reasoned Tony.

John now figured Kev had a badge, and had managed to catch Hunter pocketing it herself.

"Yeah." Mike muttered.

"So, it's settled then." Tony said, speaking loudly and turning to look at all of the Three Kings members assembled there.

The motion sensors of both Dobermans picked up new movement. Thankfully they did not turn around. When John did he saw three people walking up to them, two men and a woman. Despite the glow of the street lamps and the fading sunlight, John could see them quite clearly.

The men were black, wearing gray and brown armored long coats and had shotguns resting against their shoulders. The woman was slightly lighter skinned, with red spiked hair, and while she carried no shotgun of her wore an underarm holster with an Ares Predator IV in it. Right away John started feeling out signals for a commlink.

From the murmurs John more felt than heard, the Three Kings recognized her. He figured she was someone important.

"Friends… Brothers, we need to talk." the woman said when they got into earshot, but stopped short of John and his drones. "Dark times approach, the families have accepted our part of the land, but there's a new threat. We will have to stand together, unify our strength, if we want to survive."

"Oh shit." John muttered. On the plus side he had identified her commlink and he began working on forcing his way through the firewall.

"Amy, there's something I was hoping to talk with you about." said Tony. Through the Doberman's cameras John could see him walking closer. He stopped when he took a few paces past John and Mina.

"Seems like you've had some problems." the woman, Amy, said. "Anything that we'll be able to help with?"

"Actually, no." Tony said.

Hunter walked up with Tony, but said nothing. At this point John had gotten himself into Amy's commlink, and a quick look through the active programs showed her Predator's smartgun system running through to her eyes. There were no other connected cybernetics or electronics that John could find through her commlink. He noted her access ID and readied himself just in case he had to impersonate her commlink.

"I see you have some new faces." Amy said, "Mind telling me why they're here?"

Tony looked like his strength was about to falter. A glance back to Maria, then to Hunter, who nodded to him, seemed to give him some new strength. "I've decided… that the Three Kings are going to…" He took several deep breaths before continuing, "We're ceding from the Fronts."

"You know what this means?" Amy asked darkly.

"Yes." Tony said with a look of relief on his face that said he was starting to finally accept the path he was already on.

"The Fronts won't help you if you walk." Amy said, "You going to put your family in danger?"

"No more than what danger they're in now, or if they stayed with the Fronts." Hunter said, "The territory the Kings have is nearly surrounded by the Vory on three sides. You won't be able to protect them like the Vory can."

"Who's she?" Amy asked.

"A… consultant." Tony said.

"She's working for the Vory, isn't she?" Amy asked, though it sounded more like a statement. "You're gonna take threats from her?"

John wondered if Amy was blatantly ignoring the two Dobermans with their machineguns aimed at the Three Kings that were gathered here.

The two men with Amy changed their grips on their shotguns, holding with both hands and almost ready to use them.

"Not just them." Tony said, "And not threats, either."

Through the Doberman's eyes, John could see Billy and Valkyrie walking up to join them.

"You're too weak, Tony." Amy said.

"I'm aiming for what's best for the Three Kings." Tony countered. "Joining the Vory means fewer deaths for all of us. Is it weak to respect life?"

Amy looked at them, and even passed her eyes over John and Mina.

"_She's scary._" Mina told him.

"And what if we tried to end it right here?" Amy asked, pulling her Predator. Through his connection John could see she was aiming right at Tony's head. Hunter looked nervous, but did not draw her pistol.

The two men leveled their shotguns at them as well.

Almost as quick John pulled his own Predators and aimed them at the men.

"Yeah!" Billy yelled rushing Amy and her bodyguards.

Her bodyguards were on him in a flash, both of them firing point blank just as Billy's spurs were extending from his arms. It was almost impossible to see who's shot did it, but at least one of them got Billy knocked off of his feet.

Hunter reacted just as Billy fell, shooting her grapple hand at one of Amy's bodyguards and with a good yank ripped it from his hands.

Some of the Three Kings, those from the side that had been more vocal about staying with the Fronts, drew weapons and began to rush towards them. The Doberman Rumble did as it was programmed to, unleashing a wide burst of suppressive fire. All of the gangers dropped to the ground, and it looked like some of them had gotten hit. Frenzy held its fire, though it lowered its machinegun to keep the Three Kings in its field of fire.

The biggest surprise came when a spirit materialized in front of John and Mina. At least, based on how it just appeared John figured it was a spirit. It stood about two meters tall, with a set of four shining horns of silver rising from its head, matching plate armor with additional long spikes coming from the shoulders and elbows and knees. It had hands with two thick fingers and a thumb, but it had a massive shield on each arm that would make using them difficult. It growled, and John could see black smoke rising in short streamers from where its face would be, hidden from his view. Each breath sounded like a pump of a blacksmith's bellows, bellows so large they could fit both John and Mina inside.

Amy and her bodyguards looked nervously at the spirit. In an apparent effort to not look threatening Amy and her one still armed bodyguard held up their guns.

"Holy shit!" panted John, part from Rumble's gunfire and part of the sudden appearance of the large spirit.

"Mother fuckers." groaned Billy, still lying on the ground.

Through the Doberman's eyes, John could see the Three Kings slowly and nervously regaining their feet.

Despite what had just happened, Tony had not drawn any weapons of his own. "Please, just let us go." he pleaded to Amy. "I don't want any more bloodshed. And I'm sure we can work with the Vory to respect your territory."

"And if we don't?" Amy asked.

"You already figured out who we're working for." Hunter said, "You should know we've got orders to eliminate the Three Kings if they don't join."

"I don't wanna do that." John added.

"I'm fuckin' hurt over here!" whined Billy.

"You can lie there and bleed for a while, idiot." Hunter muttered.

"_How'd he live?_" asked Mina.

John wondered that himself, considering Billy took two shotgun slugs straight to the body.

"We could use some help over here, bitch!" one of the Kings called out from behind them.

Looking through Rumble's eye, John saw that three of the gangers had actually gotten hit and were still lying on the ground.

"I'll go." Mina said, oddly speaking up strongly enough to be heard clearly.

John followed close, and at his command the Dobermans were right with them. For whatever reason, the spirit kept close as well.

And that was when John got a good look at the front side of the spirit. Its face was of glossy black skin with a blood red tint. No teeth could be seen behind blood red lips, and its eye sockets were empty save for the wispy thin smoke that seeped from them as well as its broad fat nose and mouth. On one breast, over its heart if it were human, was a downward pointing pentacle. Its shields were matching, looking like warped and contorted faces forged of solid silver.

None of the gangers tried to stop Mina as she placed her hands on the worst looking of the three gangers. She closed her eyes in concentration, and his injuries seemed to heal right before their eyes. After maybe twenty seconds she rocked back to sit on her heels.

When he thought about it, he checked back on the smartgun of Amy's Predator. He could not see anything, and guessed she had holstered the weapon. He kept the connection anyway.

"You think we could get stuff like this from the Vory?" one of the Kings asked.

"Maybe. Maybe better body armor." John said. He did not know for certain if the Vory had mages to spare.

"But you don't look like you're wearing anything more than that leather coat." another King remarked.

John pulled up a sleeve, showing everyone the concealed holster that held a Morrissey Élan and a bracer over a skintight black sleeve. "SecureTech gear, and a form-fitting body suit." John said, naming off some the new armor he and Mina had gotten from Merlin not too long ago.

Then it hit John. Maybe Billy also had a form-fitting body suit on underneath his dirty biker outfit.

Twice more Mina worked her healing magic on the gangers. It was only after the first one that seemed to take the most out of her. Overall this took her a minute to perform all three of the spells.

"Everything alright?" asked Hunter, now standing with them.

"Yeah, I guess." John said. He now felt the connection to Amy's commlink growing tenuous. "Is everything wiz with the Fronts?" he asked.

"Yup, though she's not happy." Hunter said.

John severed his connection to Amy's commlink.

Like a mirage the spirit vanished with the setting sun.

Tony walked back to the others. "We'll be joining the Vory." he said loudly so everyone could hear. "If you don't like it then you can go with Amy. I'm sure the Fronts will take you in."

John counted four of the Three Kings walk off the same way that the two in the pickup had driven up.

"We'll bring him in when it's safe to move him." Hunter said.

"Alright. We'll wait inside for whoever from the Vory." Tony said. Circling his hand above his head like he was at a round up, Tony waved the rest of the gang inside their safehouse. Three of the injured Three Kings were carried in, with Kev left behind.

"Why don't you go with them, Billy." Hunter said, "Let us know if we still might have any problems."

Grumbling, Billy followed them. He certainly looked a lot better than John thought someone would after taking two slugs to the chest. It did look like he had extra body armor on underneath his dirty white shirt.

"What is it?" Mina asked softly once Billy was inside.

"How you feeling?" Hunter asked Kev as she climbed into the truck.

"Terrible, like shit." Kev said with a groan. "Sorry." he added when he saw John and Mina next to the truck.

"Don't worry, they've heard worse." Hunter said as she started packing up her med kit. "And maybe you should be more careful when talking to your handler." she added, pulling his badge out of her pocket.

Kev reluctantly took his badge. With help from Valkyrie he stood and was able to climb down from the truck's bed. "I'm really grateful for your help." he said, looking at each of them. "Call me if you need any help."

"Time to head back." Hunter said.

They checked one last time inside, and everything seemed to be okay for the Three Kings. Many did not look pleased still, and John figured that more would leave the gang when the Vory came to take control.

Billy was more than pleased to leave, stating something about not wanting to hang out at a sausage fest, whatever that was.

They took the most direct route back to the Vory warehouse where Nikolai had given them this job. They met him at his car in front of the warehouse where he was in body armor and made no effort to hid the two pistols at his side. There were several other bojeviks with him.

"We've managed to secure the Three Kings." Hunter said. "They'll be expecting someone at their headquarters."

"Good." Nikolai said. He did not even look at them as they received their six thousand nuyen payment.

"Now if you don't mind," Nikolai continued, taking a back seat to his car, "I've got someone to track down."

Billy snarled as the Vory car pulled out and left them standing there.

"_Can we go home now?_" Mina asked.

"That it?" John asked.

"Looks like it." Valkyrie said, heading back to her truck.

John and Mina took a more roundabout way home, partly because of making sure Hunter did not follow them, but partly because Mina wanted to get something closer to real food from an Allenson's Groceries that was well out of their way. Some of it was still soy, but at least the flavor was a higher quality than what they got from a closer by Stuffer Shack. And at least the store was well enough at the edge of the more civilized area, and it was late enough in the Friday evening that John did not have to worry too much about the machineguns on the Dobermans. Those guns, after all, were not exactly legal for the common citizen to own.

Riding on a motorcycle did prove to have more drawbacks. Particularly when it came to how much they could carry home. Though it was not much, they did get home safely.

Tired as he was, John parked his motorcycle and the Dobermans in their places before he took his share of the food and went to his room. He sat his food next to his sleeping bag and began peeling off his clothes, starting with his goggles and working down.

He was having some difficulties getting his form-fitting armor off his feet when the door to his room suddenly opened. He barely had time to look up to see Mina standing there, a mixed look of shock, surprise, and bewilderment on her face. When he noticed her face turning almost as red as her hair he realized that his underwear had gotten dragged down with his form-fitting armor.

"I… Um…" John stammered as he grabbed his shorts and pulled them back up.

"I… I think we got our drinks mixed up." Mina said softly, doing her best to look away but her face was still bright red.

John turned back, and in checking his sack noticed the red one liter bottle of soda that should have been the dark brown of Buzz cola. He grabbed it, and when he stood again saw Mina almost right up on him with her eyes locked on the liter bottle of Buzz cola held tight to her chest.

Then she looked up, their eyes locking. This made John's heart lodge in his throat and his stomach start bouncing around like an Olympic gymnast. It was fear of what she would say or do in seeing his blue-within-blue eyes, as being a magician she could read his aura and would know full well that they were not artificial or altered.

"Here!" she said sharply, thrusting the bottle she held out towards John. Tentatively they traded sodas.

Mina looked at her soda, then to John, glancing down once before turning and running out of his room. She closed the door behind her a little hard, slamming it shut.

John loosed a long held breath, sighing in relief. Then he slipped, his form-fitting armor now tangled about his ankles, and he landed on his back on his sleeping bag.

"Awe shit." he said, more for the now heavily shaken bottle of soda he still held.

At least she did not torch him, he thought as he waited for the pain of falling to subside.


	11. Run 11 : Rising Sin

Run 11 : Rising Sin (based on the mission written by Olivier Gagnon)

The last week had been awkward at best. Mina had hardly spoken despite John's attempt to apologize, even though she was the one who had barged in on him. After his third try he gave up, figuring that she did not want to hear any explanations.

Then there was the time he had been up late working on his motorcycle. He had not been doing anything special, just giving his Katana-11 the automotive equivalent of a check-up when he looked up and saw Mina walking by wearing nothing but her black 6 Tees shirt of the singer Mercurial that was just large enough to cover her hips a little. He would keep looking away before she noticed him looking at her.

A few days later she actually spoke, asking him to fix up her commlink a little more. At some point she had apparently gotten curious about virtual reality. Maybe it was his mention about a VR game Hunter had shown him, or some advertisements of VR only stuff, but whatever it was she wanted to experience virtual reality. So John helped her out.

Helping set Mina up for VR had included everything, including a new plug-in device for her commlink, at least one new program, and sculpting her persona icon. He was feeling rather gay having assembled a faerie looking icon in pinks and purples. At his suggestion, he did include a super hero kind of face mask on a face that looked a lot like her own.

A few days later, and many hours in VR, and Mina was starting to get a hang of the virtual world. Especially the extra sensory input for running hot, something she had been adamant about.

They were in the process of adding more detail to the interior of Mina's commlink, a crystalline white castle floating in the clouds of an infinite blue sky, when a call came through to John. With a thought he opened an icon to answer it.

"Hey kiddo." came Tabby's voice, her feline face filling the icon. "Got a job for you that might be right up your alley. If you and your roomie can meet me at Marcel's?"

"We have a job?" Mina asked, her young voice sounding a little weird in the mature teenage looking body of her icon.

"Well, maybe." John said, speaking in his own voice. A job always seemed to depend on what a Johnson had in mind.

"We'll be there!" Mina said excitedly.

"Great. See you both there." Tabby said before ending the call.

"Have you ever been to Marcel's?" John asked.

Mina shook her head.

All John would tell her before they left was that they did not have to worry about dressing up fancy, that the casual look would work when talking with Tabby. She did not barge into his room as he put his armor on.

Along with some of the new electronics Merlin had set them up with, John and Mina had some new fake IDs for crossing the border. Mina had thought the one she had was good enough, but John told her the same thing he had been told. Using a fake ID too much could become a liability, with enough data built up to mean a lot of trouble when you were caught.

John took them on a completely different route than the last time he had gone to Marcel's, actually crossing over into the CAS sector first and driving past the bars Rock Solid and Goodfriends on East Colfax Avenue before turning north onto York Street to head into the Sioux sector. As far as John knew, this was Mina's first time into the NAN side of the Denver FRFZ.

Even for a Saturday afternoon, Marcel's had a line of gawkers out front. It was then that he told Mina over their dynamically encrypted personal link about the more scantily clad staff that worked there. He barely had time to glance back to see her blush just a little.

They met up with Hunter in the parking lot, and they walked together through the front entrance. Mentioning a reservation under Johnson got them through the door without any problems.

Finding Tabby was easy enough as she was one of only two cat-like changelings in Marcel's, with the other being one of the waitresses. Billy and Morph were already at the table with her, and Tabby actually looked happy to see the others. Morph, at Tabby's left, had himself a pint of beer while Billy, at Tabby's right, had a pile of hot wings and another pile of chewed on chicken bones in front of him. Seeing the razorboy looking like he had just climbed out of a vat of chipotle sauce immediately killed John's appetite for food.

It had apparently done the same for Hunter and Mina, as the three of them simply ordered sodas when a waitress asked them what they wanted.

"Glad you could make it." Tabby said with a smile.

"Oh god, another kid?" groaned Morph.

"_Try saying something back at him._" prompted John.

"Wanna fireball up your butt?" Mina asked Morph as she took a chair for herself. She said it with more conviction than John expected to hear.

"No." Morph told her.

"Might wanna be careful, there." Hunter said as she sat next to him, "Firefly's our magic support."

"So you finally gonna tell us the job?" Billy blurted out. Thankfully he spoke before he started chewing on another hot wing.

"Yeah, a little datasteal with a spin. Should I go on?" Tabby asked.

"Fuck yeah!" Billy smacked with a mouth full of food.

John felt a little more sick to his stomach.

"_Gross._" Mina said.

"As long as Billy keeps eating with his mouth shut, I'm in." Morph said.

"Agreed." added Hunter.

John had to keep his mouth shut, so he only nodded.

"Guess the kids are too grossed out to talk." commented Morph.

"Well then," said Tabby, trying to keep her gaze from falling to Billy at her immediate right, "I'm glad I could count on you. Here's the skinny. I have a friend in need. Her name is Mayuri. She's a geisha working for the Yakuza." She looked around at everyone at the table, extra sternly at Billy, before continuing, "That doesn't mean she's a whore, by the way."

"Shucks." muttered Billy.

Tabby shot Billy a sharp look, but said nothing about it. "Geishas are high-end escorts. They're trained from a young age to serve as entertainers for upscale men. They make polite and witty conversation, play music, serve tea, that sort of stuff. They're real popular with Japanacorp bigwigs. Anyway, this geisha gig, it's for life, a sort of slaver deal."

"Good deal." Billy said.

"Shut up." Morph and Hunter said at the same time.

"My friend Mayuri wants out." Tabby continued, "I want you to meet with her and see what you can do."

"That's all?" Billy asked.

"What'd they just say?" John asked him.

"No, that's not all." Tabby said sternly, "It's just a prelude to the real job. What I really need you to do is recover some paydata. The catch is only Mayuri knows where the data is kept, and she won't tell me until we, meaning you, help her. When you get the info from her, I want you to get me my file."

"What about us?" Morph asked, "Hitting the yakuza for data's sure to bite us in the ass."

"Fuck 'em if they try to bite me." Billy said, taking another bite of a hot wing.

"They'll be more worried about their own asses once the data's out." Tabby told them, "They won't have time to worry about you guys."

"Why not just have him look up the server and hack it from here?" asked Billy.

"I could try hacking it from your home." John retorted.

"Impossible. The server's not connected to the matrix." Tabby told them, "And I know only Mayuri who knows where the server's located."

Before Billy could ask the next obvious question, John pulled a cable from the commlink he wore on his left forearm. "I can plug this in and hack it from there." he said.

Billy closed his mouth just as if he was going to ask how the server could be hacked if it were not wireless.

"Pay's four thousand nuyen, each, with half up front." Tabby said.

"Oh no." groaned John.

"What?" asked Tabby.

"He's expecting Billy to start whining about the pay." Hunter said flatly.

John looked at Billy, who had the look of a wrongly accused victim.

"I just think we oughta get paid more, that's all." Billy said.

"Weak." Morph said.

"I think you're getting paid well enough for this job." Tabby said, "What're you spending it all on anyway?"

"Drugs, booze, and hookers." John said immediately.

Tabby sighed. John glanced at Hunter, and she too had the same exasperated look on her face.

"Sad thing is, I think he's right." Hunter said.

"He is?" Morph asked.

"Yeah," Hunter said, "Cypher is right from time to time."

"Oh! Him!" Morph said. "Well, four thousand's fine with me." he added.

"More than fine for me, too." said Hunter.

John and Mina merely nodded.

"What?" cried Billy, "I don't like workin' for peanuts."

"At least it's work." commented Morph, downing the last of his beer. "If you're not living above your means it's also rent money."

"Fine." relented Billy, pouting.

"You'll find Mayuri at a place called Aikiwa. Everything's already been set up for you." Tabby told them, forwarding them their two thousand nuyen retainer. John also received a private text file detailing the information he had to get, like the file name, size, and more. "Let me know when you've got the data." she said, standing up to leave.

"Looks like that's it." Hunter said, standing as well.

John and Hunter followed on their motorcycles, while Billy rode with Morph in his Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit.

Aikiwa was deep in the CAS sector, and they took some back streets, Colorado Boulevard past Happenstance, highway 87, and finally East Hampden Avenue on their way there. Finding the right place was not all that difficult, John found out once they got there.

It was in the Cherry Creek neighborhood, and the building itself looked as if it had been plucked directly from Japan and dropped next to the Rocky Mountains. It certainly looked authentic and as fragile as John expected wet tissue paper to be.

John and Hunter took a parking space for their motorcycles three spots away from where Morph parked. There were no empty parking spaces next to each other.

"Wish the fuckin' bitch would pay us more." muttered Billy as they walked to the front entrance of Aikiwa.

John opened up an augmented reality object and did a quick search on cheap used cars. He found one, tagged the ARO to public, and flipped it over to Billy for him to see. "Here's a Volkswagen Elektro that someone's asking seventy-five for." he said. "If ya got at least six grand now you'll be able to buy it and a good license to drive it 'round town."

Billy looked at it for a moment before he angrily closed out the window. "I only need twenty-five hundred, not six thousand, dumbass." he said.

"So you only had five hundred before this job?" John asked. "Shit, and Tabby thought I'd have bad money management skills."

Mina giggled. It looked like Hunter was also trying her best to stifle a grin.

Wisely Billy kept his mouth shut.

"_He's learning not to try and be smart around me._" John told Mina.

This made Mina giggle more, drawing a strange look from Billy.

"Hey! Wait up!" called Morph as he caught up to them at the door. He had something in hand, and before anyone could say anything he squirted Billy with whatever it was.

"Hey! What the?" cried Billy as he tried to defend himself against the mist. "What the fuck's this stuff?"

"Cologne, because you reek." Morph told them.

"Yeah, because he never showers." John said.

"Yes I do!" Billy exclaimed.

"Golden showers don't count." Morph countered, giving Billy a few more squirts.

"_Golden showers?_" Mina asked.

John could only shrug his shoulders. The others did not seem to be too inclined to tell them what Morph meant. Billy certainly did not look inclined to say anything at all.

"Okay, now you don't stink so bad." Morph said.

Mina waved a hand in front of her face, and John had to agree. Billy did still stink, but at least the musky smell of the cologne was better than the urine and body odor Billy normally gave off.

The inside of Aikiwa was almost the same as the outside. The walls were made from real cherry blossom wood and delicate tissue. The scent of various teas lingered in the air, for what they could smell aside from Billy's new scent. There were even two Japanese women dressed in kimonos playing classical Japanese music softly, all making for a very relaxing atmosphere.

Then the door closed, giving John a shocking surprise as the pervasive presence and weight of the Matrix was nearly gone. Swallowing hard, he tried to keep himself calm amidst the local WiFi of the relatively few commlinks he could sense. The rest of the matrix was still there, but was like trying to look at something you could only see in your peripheral vision.

Morph asked a kimono-clad Japanese waitress about a reservation, and she led them to the back of the house to a private booth. In the center was a short table surrounded by half a dozen pillows.

After a short while the door to the private booth opened again, and a Japanese woman in full geisha regalia from makeup to sandals walked in. She politely gestured for everyone to kneel around the table.

Morph and Hunter were first to kneel. John figured it might be best to mimic them, so he knelt on a pillow of his own in the same way. Mina apparently figured the same thing as she knelt next to him.

Billy dropped his buttocks down on a pillow, sitting with one leg arched up like an A-frame.

The geisha looked each one of them over before returning her gaze to Morph. "I am Mayuri." she said in accented English.

"Thank you for your time, Mayuri-san." Morph said, "We were told you needed assistance."

"_Hai_." Mayuri said sharply, "Though I owe much to my house and Madam Kikuya, I no longer wish to be geisha."

"Seems nice enough." commented Billy, "Could just run off. Security here's a joke."

Mayuri did not even flinch, her gaze locked on Morph. "I want you to get permission for me to leave." she told them, "If you do this for me, I will tell you what you need."

"Why not just leave?" asked Billy.

"Ever get hunted?" Morph asked him.

"Yeah, lots." Billy said.

"He doesn't mean 'hounded'." Hunter said, "Though I'd expect you'll get hounded by bouncers and the like a lot."

"You are right." Mayuri said, "I would be hunted. I need permission to not be hunted."

"We will help you, but there must be someone we can speak to." Hunter said, "Who has the power to give you permission to leave?"

"I didn't say I'd do this." Billy told them.

"I'd say you did by sitting down, dumbass." John said.

"There are two people." Mayuri said, still looking at Morph. It was like the rest of them were not there. John figured this was some kind of Japanese etiquette thing. Hunter did not seem to mind, but Billy was looking rather pissed off that she did not give him a second look.

"Madam Kikuya. She is… headmistress of geisha house. It on East Orchard Road." Mayuri continued, "Also Yoshiro-san. He is yakuza… supervisor, and at Lucky Eight casino. Either person can give permission to leave."

"Which person do you think is more likely to be willing to let you leave?" Morph asked.

Mayuri closed her eyes to think for a few seconds. When she opened them again, her gaze coming straight back to Morph once more, she said, "Madam Kikuya dislikes me. Yoshiro-san is distasteful."

"What the fuck kind of answer is that?" asked Billy. "And how the hell would she know where we need to go to?"

Hunter sighed, her shoulders dropping noticeably. Then she said something that John could only guess was in Japanese.

"Pardon his ignorance, Mayuri-san." Morph said, "I think we have enough to go on."

Morph was first to stand, rocking his legs underneath himself to smoothly take his feet like it was nothing. Watching Hunter, he saw her do almost the exact same thing. John found he could mimic them as he also stood, though he wobbled a little as his balance shifted. Even Mina regained her feet nearly flawlessly.

Billy grunted a few times as he stood, though Mayuri was more graceful as John thought a geisha should be as she stood with them.

"_Arigatou gozaimasu_." Morph said bowing.

Seeing Hunter bow as well, John bowed as well, taking his cue from Morph when to stand again.

It also looked like Mayuri had also bowed. It was kind of hard to tell when John was looking at the floor while he bowed.

John was so glad when the doors opened on their way out.

"So who're we hitting first?" Billy asked.

"Some contacts." Morph said. "We're not going to be hitting either place blind."

John climbed onto his motorcycle to sit and wait. Mina sat right behind him, her arms loose around him as she rested against his back. Hunter sat on her own Contrail, looking like she was deep in thought. John figured she was in a more private call with someone.

Billy leaned impatiently against Morph's Jackrabbit, with Morph sitting inside talking to someone.

A few minutes later Morph got out of his car. "Got some dirt on this Yoshiro character." he said.

"Sounds better than what I found out about Madam Kikuya." Hunter said.

Billy groaned.

"Doesn't sound like you got a whole lot on Kikuya." Morph said, "Think we ought to skip her and try working a bully the yaks don't like?"

"Sounds like it'll a better shot." Hunter said.

This time when Morph got into his car Billy did as well. As he started his motorcycle, John wondered if Morph had locked the door on him earlier.

It was over an hour long drive as Morph led them across the border into the UCAS sector, just south of the warrens, to an ugly pit of a casino called Lucky Eight's. The place looked like the neighborhood, rundown and dirty. The bar itself was not even a real bar as far as John was concerned. The only access to Lucky Eight's was a flight if cold cement stairs at the side of a cheap electronics store.

"I really don't like this area." Hunter said as they pulled into an empty field across the street that served as a parking lot.

"Too close to the Warrens for you?" Morph asked.

East Arapahoe Road, the now generally accepted southern boundary of the Aurora Warrens, was less than a kilometer north, but even that was a little too close for the neighborhood to not be impacted.

"That, and I think that Universal Brotherhood had a chapterhouse near here, too." Hunter told them.

"Universal…?" John asked as he and Mina climbed off of his Katana-11.

"Bugs, kid, bugs." Morph said, closing the door to his subcompact.

"Like that gator-thing a few weeks ago." Hunter added.

"Awe shit." John cussed.

"Wouldn't worry. There haven't been any serious bug sightings for years." Morph told them.

"Tell that to the fucker that took my arm!" exclaimed Billy, pointing to his right arm.

"Still didn't have to spring for a whole arm." Hunter told him as they headed towards Lucky Eight's.

"Think the kids should wait outside?" Morph asked as they crossed the street.

"I don't think they give a shit about kids." John answered, pointing to a grouping of bicycles leaning against the building that looked like had seen better days.

"Okay. Guess it might be easier to hack his commlink." Morph said as he headed down the stairs to the bar's door.

John took that to mean that he should hack Yoshiro's commlink right away.

The patrons inside barely even looked up from their drinks, nor the two at the bar's only pool table from their game. There were no lights save what came from cheap neon signs. The floor was carpeted in equally cheap, and rather dirty, felt carpeting. The air smelled stale, of old beer and cheap tobacco, and like the place only got aired out whenever the front door was ever open.

"You get a rundown on this guy?" Hunter asked.

"Greasy Japanese guy with a ponytail in a cheap brown suit." Morph answered.

"Eww." commented Mina.

Looking around, John thought most of the patrons present would fit the 'greasy' part of the description. He wondered if Mina thought the same thing as she pressed just a little closer to him.

"Now Billy, just keep quiet and let me do the talking." Morph said as he headed deeper into the bar.

"Hey!" Billy returned dejectedly.

"Just do it." Hunter added.

Yoshiro sat alone in a booth, a cigarette slowly burning itself out in his mouth. He fiddled with a commlink as they all walked up to him, his fingers decorated with more gold rings than John felt was necessary. Right away John sought out that commlink's signals, and had it just as quickly. He wasted no time in starting to force his way through its firewall.

"What you want?" Yoshiro asked as Morph sat himself down on the opposite bench seat. His voice had a thicker Japanese accent than Mayuri's.

"We wanna talk to you about someone." Morph said, "A geisha…"

"No." Yoshiro said sharply, returning his attention back to his commlink.

"I don't think you understand…" Morph started to say.

"No, you do not understand." interrupted Yoshiro. "No geisha for you."

"Neither do you." Morph said, "You're not even taking a moment to listen."

"Your words bore me." Yoshiro said with a sneer. "Go, now."

"And you're a fool, too." Morph countered, "You don't even know why we're here."

Yoshiro paused with his fiddling and actually looked at Morph. He may have looked annoyed at first, but now he looked more upset. "I do not care." he said sharply.

About then John breached the firewall on Yoshiro's commlink. A handful of AROs appeared to John, all of them angled for Yoshiro's point of view, along with several of the active files that he saw right away were nothing but spreadsheets. Thankfully they were in English, so he started looking them over.

"Do you care that we know you don't have much yakuza support?" Morph asked.

Yoshiro glared at Morph.

"Just so you know," Morph said, "we're not gonna be intimidated by any yakuza threats."

John noticed something odd among the files in Yoshiro's commlink. Two spreadsheet files were nearly identical, and had a history of being updated one after another. The only really noticeable differences between the two were some extra information and their bottom lines.

On a hunch, John asked, "How about we tell 'em you're stealing from 'em?" It felt like to him that one was Yoshiro's personal records, and the other was what was being sent to the yakuza bosses above him.

"You have no proof." Yoshiro stated.

Through Yoshiro's commlink, John set the relevant files to Morph so he could also see and read them.

Morph took a second to look at the files. To help speed things along, John pointed out the key spots.

"Kid's right." Morph said, "I see it right in your finances. Two books, and I'll bet you send the cooked book to the yakuza."

It was a split second, just as Yoshiro even twitched to stand John had both Morrissey Élan pistols in his hands. He held them not too discretely on Yoshiro, making sure they were visible enough for the yakuza guy to see they were aimed right at him.

Yoshiro froze, staring straight at John. This made John feel rather nervous, but he did his best to keep a poker face.

"We gonna kick his ass?" Billy asked anxiously.

"Not yet." Hunter said sternly.

Morph was cool as ice. "Yeah, the boia hacked your 'link just now." he said, "And we've got proof enough that the yakuza will kill you. But it's a really simple fix."

"What you want?" Yoshiro asked, easing back into his seat.

"The geisha I mentioned." Morph told him, "Her name is Mayuri. All we want is for you to release her, free her of her geisha duties. Do this and we'll quietly walk away."

Yoshiro grinned. "You are coward." he said. "You do nothing if I refuse."

John visibly and very noticeably cocking the hammers to both holdout pistols. He could feel his heart racing, knowing he only had sick n' shock rounds in both pistols. The taser rounds might kill Yoshiro if he unloaded all ten shots into the greasy yakuza man, and that was only if Yoshiro had not invested in electrical resistant clothing.

"Him you'll be lucky. You'll be dead before you know what he shot you with." Morph said as if John had APDS loaded in them. "It'll certainly be faster than if the girl killed you. She's quite the pyromaniac, from what I hear. Certainly faster than if we let chrome dome do the job."

"Fuck you." muttered Billy.

"And we know the yakuza don't like you." Morph added. "We kill you, we have someone else we can talk to to get what we want."

Yoshiro looked back to the AROs of his commlink. John could feel the analyze program he had running try to track him down, and he knew it would be virtually impossible to get caught. And even then John was only looking around in Yoshiro's commlink now and not doing anything that could attract attention.

Sneering, Yoshiro brought up his contacts list. Many names were in Japanese, and John could not tell who's name it was that he was calling. When Yoshiro spoke, it was in Japanese. They could hear an older sounding woman talking back to Yoshiro, also in Japanese.

"Hunter?" John asked.

"He's on the level." Hunter told them. "Talking to Madam Kikuya, telling her that Mayuri's released."

Yoshiro wrapped up the call, telling them, "There. It done."

"And we'll be on our way." Morph said, sliding out of his booth seat. He took an extra moment to brush himself, particularly his backside, as if he had been sitting in a pile of forest litter.

John carefully set the hammers back on his holdouts before letting them slide back up his sleeves as they left. He wondered if the greasy feeling in his mind was from Yoshiro's commlink as he cut the connection, or just from having spent what time they did in The Lucky Eight.

No one seemed to give them a second look as they headed back out. Seeing the setting sun behind the Rockies was never more a pleasant sight, nor the fresh air as John climbed up the stairs.

The border guards were lackadaisical as they crossed back into the CAS sector. The trip back itself took longer, both from a mix of bad timing with the lights and a heavy rainstorm that came down on Denver from the north.

Parking back at Aikiwa was a little easier, and John was glad to find a somewhat sheltered spot to park his Katana-11. He was glad, too, as the rain had started to smell funny.

It was not such a shock the second time around when the doors closed and John's connection to the matrix was almost severed. There were different geisha playing music this time, but Mayuri was the one to greet them. Whether or not she knew she was free, John could not tell, her face like porcelain and showing no emotion.

Mayuri led them back to the same private room, taking her seat with the grace of a model geisha. John and the others also sat. Again Billy was the only one to just drop his buttocks down while everyone else mimicked Mayuri in kneeling.

"Thank you for my freedom." Mayuri said, her eyes only on Morph, "Per our agreement I will tell you what you need to know."

"How the fuck did you know?" asked Billy, "There's no matrix here and we didn't even tell ya yet!"

"Ever hear of a wired commlink?" John asked back. "Only a fool would think we're totally cut off in here."

Without even flinching to glance at Billy or John, Mayuri continued. "The server is in basement of yakuza casino in Pueblo sector. It is on South Irving Street."

"Just how the fuck do you even know this?" asked Billy.

"Would you just shut up? _Baka inu._" Hunter said.

"_I can't believe he's always this stupid._" Mina told John.

"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Morph asked.

John sighed heavily. "_Yeah. It's like he's the poster boy of 'Too Stupid To Live'._"

"Hopefully there's only one on the street." Hunter said.

"There is only one." Mayuri said. "You must go inside. The server is not connected to the matrix. And if you will excuse me, here is where we part."

They all stood, with Billy grunting like a horse pulling a heavy load. Like before they bowed before actually leaving, though John was pretty sure Billy just stood instead. As they walked towards the exit, John thought about how he might be able to hack the server if it was not wireless. He hoped he would be able to plug one of his commlinks into it as then he could use it to make a wireless bridge for his technomancer abilities to get through.

"Crap, still raining." muttered Billy as they stepped outside.

"At least you got a car to ride in." muttered John as he zipped up his coat before venturing into the downpour.

"Wish I had a car." John said softly as he and Mina walked over to his motorcycle. The rain felt cold as it started to soak through his hair.

"Me too." Mina added aloud.

"Shitty weather for a steak out." remarked Hunter. She stood in the doorway, sheltered from the rain, her eyes darting about like she was reading something. "Take a look at this." she added, an ARO appearing.

Placing a hand on the ARO, John copied so he could flip it around and read much easier. The ARO was a weather map of the whole Denver area, with a string of greens and oranges representing the rain density running north to south over the city parallel to the Rockies. There was a time laps option, and when John hit the playback he saw that they were on the leading edge of the rain, with most of the storm front yet to roll over them from the north.

"Awe man." whined John.

"We could always leave Billy and do the steak out in my car." offered Morph.

"We won't fit." remarked Hunter flatly.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll figure something out." Morph replied with a grin.

"What about that RV thingy?" John asked.

"RV… thingy?" Morph asked back.

"The job we did last month? You know, your friend's?" John asked.

"Oh, that!" exclaimed Morph, "I'd have to see if I can borrow it again."

"Why don't we just go hit the place now?" asked Billy.

"I'd wanna make some calls, first." Morph said, "I'm sure Hunter does too."

"At least there's a McHugh's not too far away from here." Morph said, "'Bout three K from here on Hampden."

"There's a Nukit Burgers closer." Hunter said through her helmet, "'Bout a K and a half just off Hampden."

"I vote closer!" John called out.

"I don't give a shit." Billy said, finally being let into Morph's subcompact.

Lights were with them as they traveled through the downpour. There was a moderate crowd already there, filling about half of the parking lot with several cars and trucks.

Inside was nice and warm and not too crowded with a dinner crowd. After ordering a burger, soda, and fries, all of it really made from soy judging by the prices, they secured themselves a corner booth.

John brought up a few private AROs and ate in silence as he started looking for whatever information he could find on a yakuza casino on South Irving Street in the PCC sector. Just as Mayuri had said, there was only one such place on that street. Now if only the burger he ate tasted a little more like beef and a lot less like styrofoam.

On a hunch he pulled up Lady Jade's commcode to call her.

"Moshi moshi." came an audio only answer.

"Uh, it's Cypher." John silently said in English.

"Hey kiddo. Was starting to wonder if you were ever going to call." said Lady Jade.

"Yeah. Wish I could talk but I need to know if you know some stuff." John said, "It's about the yakuza casino on South Irving."

"It won't be easy. They take their security seriously." Lady Jade told him. "The place's warded, completely WiFi inhibited, and triple coverage on the security cameras outside. Unless you get in all you'll be able to hack are the guard's 'links that're outside."

"And once I'm inside the building?" John asked.

"If you can get in, you'll have the run of the place, I'm sure." Lady Jade said. "Their security server's one step below military grade for a firewall. Prob'ly the heaviest you'll have to deal with, though the rest is high end stuff. Trip an alert and there'll be at least two IC and who knows how many white hats on you, and that's any node there."

"Great." muttered John.

"And I hope you've got a way in. It's not just a casino. That's just the basement." Lady Jade told him. "The second floor's a brothel. Place may be illegal, but they're certainly not gonna let kid in."

"I could help others though, right?" asked John.

"Sure. Unless things've changed lately the guards get their 'links updated hourly with a guest list from the server. If your name's on the list, you can get in."

John grinned, though he wondered just how the update was done with the wireless suppression of the place. A few wired ideas came to mind that might work.

"Anything else I can help with?" Lady Jade asked.

"Maybe. I'll let you know. And thanks." John said, downing a mouthful of cola.

"Something up?" Morph asked.

"Just thinkin'." John said before taking his second to last bite of his soyburger.

Morph's commlink chimed. After a few seconds to apparently read a message, he said, "My friend's willing to loan out the RV, but he's got a few conditions."

"Uh oh. What is it?" Hunter asked.

"He wants me to make sure there won't be any trace that we used it there." Morph answered. "And he doesn't want us to take it out of the sector."

"Trace. Like a data trail?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." Morph said, "Feels he got some heat from the last time I borrowed it. He's a bit on the paranoid side…"

"Not like it's not something he should be concerned about." added Hunter.

"If a data trail's all he's worried about, I can take care of that easily." John said. "Be easier if he gives me a name and passcode with full access."

"And if he doesn't?" Morph asked.

"Then I gotta hack it and it won't be quite as clean." John replied.

Morph tapped his fingers in mid air. A minute later he must have gotten a reply. "Here's the file to give you." Morph said, sending John a data file. "But I won't be able to pick it up until tomorrow."

"So what do we do now?" asked Billy.

"Take the night off and meet up tomorrow." Hunter said. "That is, unless you wanna do a steak out in the pouring rain."

"What I wanna do is hit the place." Billy said.

"Then you're doing it alone." Morph said.

"_Would he really do it?_" Mina silently asked John.

"And if you do do it alone, we'll make sure you don't get your pay." Hunter added.

"_He won't now._" John silently said. "_He's whined about money so much he won't do anything that'll not get him more._"

It looked like John was right, considering how Billy scowled. It was kind of hard to tell when his eyeband obscured some of his facial features.

"There's a parking garage at the Southwest Plaza Mall at the corner of Wadsworth and Bowles." Morph said. "We can meet up there 'round ten?" John noted the location on his commlink.

"I can be there." Hunter said. "I'll do a quick recon of the place bore then to find us a spot to park so we can watch."

"So what am I gonna do?" asked Billy.

"Go take a shower?" Mina asked.

"And what're you gonna do?" Billy asked her.

"None ya business." Mina answered with a heavy touch of sass. John smiled.

John and Mina were the first to leave. Despite the both of them having plenty of nuyen from turning Enrico Trebol over to the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research, they opted for a substantially cheaper coffin motel a few kilometers west. It also happened to be next door to a Cap'n Beef, though it was a little closer to the Happy Canyon Shopping Center than John liked. Though as long as An Peng was not in the area, and really gave a shit if John was, he expected there would not be any real trouble.

The neighborhood itself had originally been leveled after the first Treaty Of Denver in 2018 when Aztechnology and the United Canadian And American States built their walls and fences around their sectors. The walls remained after the Confederation Of American States took over the area in 2034, and were later torn down when the nation tried to revitalize the old Aztlan sector after Ghostwalker came into power on January twenty-seventh of 2061. Crime was pretty low, though John did tell his motorcycle to alert him of anything that was suspicious. Mina also mentioned she asked a spirit to guard it as well.

"Looks like the place's all automated." remarked John when they walked into the coffin motel. The inside almost looked like a shopping market, with long isles and numerous coffins stacked four high. There was even a section dedicated to trolls and other such larger metahumans, with stronger looking coffins stacked three high. The only thing missing was a counter with a person behind it to tend to peoples' needs.

"How do we do this?" asked Mina.

John looked the various coffins over. Some coffins had a green "Empty" light while others had a red "Occupied" light instead. When he touched the green light of one coffin an ARO appeared with payment options, one of which was to debit directly from a credstick by a port in the door.

"Doesn't look too hard." John said.

"Over here!" called Mina.

Heading over to where Mina had called him, John found her in the area of troll sized coffins. "There's cheaper ones over there." he told her.

"I… uh, don't wanna sleep in one alone." she said sheepishly.

"These things can lock on the inside." John told her.

"It's… not that." she said, looking down at her feet.

"I'm sure they lock from the inside…" John started to say. This did not seem to console Mina in the least. "What is it?"

"I… I don't wanna be alone in one of these." she managed to confess.

"So you wanna share one with me?" John asked, now starting to feel a little nervous himself.

Her answer was a sudden hug so tight it surprised John.

"Alright, alright!" relented John.

Mina was smiling when she finally let go. She hit the button for a high up coffin and was about transfer the funds when John reached up and stuck a credstick in the port. She gave him a funny look as the coffin took his payment instead.

"Why'd you do that?" she asked, opening the coffin door before climbing up in first.

"Tell ya in a bit." he said as he climbed up after her.

The coffin was just as bland white on the inside, and was lit by a collection of soft white LEDs. It did have a privacy lock which automatically set when the door was closed.

"So, why?" Mina asked.

"Credsticks don't have a data trail." John said, dimming the rather bright lights by physical controls in the coffin's door. "Less data for a fake ID to get."

John slipped his goggles off and deposited them in a storage pocket. He also slipped out of his black leather jacket and put it in the same. It looked like there was another pocket on the other side, which was where Mina had stuffed her jacket. He moved to lie on his side on what he thought was his half of the coffin.

"Is there something wrong?" Mina asked as she rolled over onto her side, looking at John.

"Just that… I don't know." John said, looking away.

Mina waited before asking, "Don't like girls?"

"What?" John asked back, completely taken by surprise.

"Girls. You don't like us that way?" Mina asked. "It's okay if it's true."

"What gave you that idea?" John asked her.

"Just things." Mina said, looking down at her feet. "Woulda thought a boy'd wanna share with a girl."

John was trying to figure out what Mina was thinking. He looked her up and down, watching her as she fidgeted.

"And if you're gay, that's alright." she continued, looking down at her feet, "I… I won't tell."

"I'm not gay." John told her. He had a thought, which made his heart beat furiously in his chest and more nervous than hacking into a high grade server. His mind raced with thoughts of what he wanted to do, what he thought he should do, and a silent prayer that his armpits and palms would not turn into a sweaty mess.

"It's okay. You don't… gotta…" She let the sentence trail off when she noticed John was right up close to her.

They stared into each other's eyes for who knew how long. Then John scooted that last little bit, pressing his lips to hers. Maybe he pushed in a little too firmly, feeling her scoot back just a bit, but she did not break their kiss. Instead he felt her put an arm around him, and so he did the same, trying to make like a steamy romance trid.

It felt like they both decided to stop at about the same time. Both were breathing heavily as they gazed at each other. John's heart pounded as hard as ever.

"Sorry." Mina said softly, looking down at his chest. She too was breathing rather heavily.

Rolling onto his back, John swallowed before asking, "So what now? We like boyfriend-girlfriend now?" The thought felt strange in his heart and mind, and sounded almost as strange when he said it.

"I dunno." Mina said, though she rolled over, leaning against his side with her hand over his heart. It certainly did feel nice, lying together like this. "We could say we are. Bet Billy'd get really pissed off!" She giggled at the thought.

John could not help but smile. He had no idea what kind of relationships Billy had, if any. As far as John knew none of the others he worked with had a significant other of any kind. It did seem funny to think that he might doing better in a relationship than Billy was.

Some time passed in silence before Mina asked, "Have I ever told you thanks?"

"For what?" John asked back.

"Everything." she said a little sleepily.

John let his thoughts wander, and the next thing he knew it was morning and Mina was stirring.

"Is it morning?" Mina asked. She sounded as if she were only half awake.

John looked at the commlink on his wrist. "'Bout seven." he said.

Mina groaned in protest as she slid away from John. "I like it when we can sleep in." she muttered as she rolled over and began collecting her few things.

John looked Mina up and down a few times before rolling over to collect his goggles. She was rather cute, he kept thinking. He also figured she liked him considering that she could have moved on and left him behind at any time.

There were only a few other people getting up at the same time. They paid Mina and John no mind as the two left.

"Oh wow!" cried Mina, hurrying off. Following after her, John caught up to her as she was looking over a large truck.

It was a large pickup truck that had been jacked up at least an additional thirty centimeters, with extra shocks visible behind the large and wide smart tires. It was bright yellow at the front, colored to look like it was on fire, with simple yet classic flames decorating the front doors, turning to a deep ruby red for the rest of the truck. The windows were also customized to match the two toned flames, and even the front and back hubcaps were colored to match. The bed of the truck looked like it was just large enough to fit three GM-Nissan Doberman drones, but too short to fit his Katana-11 even if he managed to get it in diagonally.

"You kids like 'er?" came a deep voice from behind them.

John turned around to look at the fat belly of a troll. Looking up put the troll at about twice John's height, with greasy brown hair and a pair of down curled horns of a darker brown.

"Yeah!" Mina said excitedly. Was Mina hoping they would get a truck like this one?

"Be nice if ya could carry a cycle in it." commented John.

"Ya can." the troll said.

John felt a signal from the troll's commlink to the truck, and almost right away the back window slid down into the panel. Then the truck's back seats fold over on themselves and the panel dropped down over them. Overall the bed of the truck was lengthened, long enough to easily fit his Katana-11 and another motorcycle in the back, though at the cost of the cab being open to the elements from behind.

"What kind of truck is this?" asked Mina.

"A GMC Timberwolf." the troll said, "They say it's some classic truck remake, Chevy, I think."

"Neat." commented Mina before they walked off.

John's motorcycle was just fine, so they headed off to a Cap'n Beef for breakfast. After an alright breakfast of soy based products they were off again to meet up with Morph. They had luck at the border crossing at the 285/85 interchange, catching the border guard at the end of his shift. From there it was just over ten more kilometers west, then south, to the Southwest Plaza Mall. Hunter was right behind them as they pulled into the parking garage at the corner of Bowles and Wadsworth. He led the way as they slowly drove through the parking garage, finding the silver Ford-Canada Bison with Morph, Billy, and a male ork standing behind it on the third floor. The ork looked similar to Billy in build, though being a bit larger around the middle, prominent tusks that were a bit more dingy yellow than they should have been, squinty eyes that might have been green in color, and dirty red hair that was almost brown with what John thought might have been engine grease. The ork's clothing looked a little nicer, in somewhat clean blue jeans and a denim jacket that he wore open. He wore no shirt underneath it.

Three spaces down they were able to park their motorcycles.

"This's it?" asked Mina as they walked up.

"Yup." John answered.

"Looks old." Mina commented.

"May be old, but it'll blend in with the neighborhood." Hunter told them.

"Do I even wanna know what you're going to do with it?" asked the ork gruffly.

"Does it matter?" John asked back, finding the RV's node and using the information Morph had passed to him to sign into it. Thankfully it was full access, like he had asked for. He also signed into the node of his Katana-11. With an ARO to both vehicles under his hands, John went straight to the router settings of both at the same time.

"Who's the kid?" the ork asked.

"That's Cypher, the hacker I told you could fix the data trail for you." Morph said.

"That kid?" the ork asked.

"Yeah, that kid." John returned in a sour tone. Having accessed the router settings he entered in the access ID of the other vehicle.

"So what're you doing to my RV?" the ork asked.

"Accessing its router settings and trading the ID with my cycle's." John said, hitting the last command for both simultaneously. "And it's already done."

"You're not fucking it up, are you?" the ork asked.

"No." John answered. Looking up at the nearly two meter tall, slightly fat ork, he could see he did not look too appeased. "My motorcycle's ID is now your RV's, and your RV's ID is now my motorcycle's." he told them.

"So when we drive out of here, all the nodes will think your RV is his bike, and that your RV's still here." Morph added.

"We reboot the nodes, they'll switch back." John said, "It's child's play."

"Well, a child did do it." commented Billy.

Behind his goggles, John frowned.

"Not like you could've done any better." Hunter said as she walked over to the RV and climbed into it.

"Just don't do anything to it." the ork said.

John ignored him as he climbed in behind Hunter. Mina was right behind him.

"Relax," Morph said soothingly, "it'll be better than last time. This time, all the data's gonna say your RV's here the whole time."

It was a relatively short drive to the yakuza casino, and Morph was able to find a nice spot where they could see the building yet not look like they were casing the place. With the windows blacked out from the outside, a feature most all vehicles had these days, no one on the outside could tell if there was even anyone inside. It was also kind of nice as Mina sat with John rather close in a seat that was barely big enough for the two of them to share.

Once they were there, Hunter gave Mina some instructions and advice on how to check the magical security of the casino. John did not quite get the idea of 'projecting', but when her body went limp next to him he figured it was like how his body would when he dove into virtual reality.

John kept his mind outside of VR, however, feeling the webwork of WiFi signals in the area. It had taken him a few minutes to find and isolate the commlinks that the two guards at the door had since they were ghosting, or running their commlinks in hidden mode. He could even feel the presence of commlinks from the people who came and went, and from how difficult it was to identify their commlinks figured that everyone who came to the casino was running them hidden. Everything changed once someone went inside, as Lady Jade had told him the casino was completely WiFi inhibited.

"Everyone's ghosting." John told them after they had sat there for about half an hour in near silence.

"Yeah. Looks like the guards ask for a name when someone comes up to the door." Hunter added.

"Can we hack the guest list?" Morph asked.

"Maybe." John said.

"Hold up." interrupted Hunter.

John wished he had a zoom feature in his goggles as he had difficulties making out what was going on. Just as he was about to ask what was up, Hunter spoke.

"You getting any signals inside there, Cypher?" she asked.

"Everything disappears as soon as they're in." he told her. It was like a dead zone where the building was. Knowing there was supposed to be wireless activity there felt like he was trying to see into a glass mirage rather than actually seeing through it. "I can hack the guard's links, but that's it."

"And it's eleven now." Hunter added. "I saw one fiddle with his commlink. Might've been to get an update."

"And they get those hourly." John told them.

"Must have a short ranged burst transceiver near the door, then." Hunter reasoned, "I think you'd've picked up something otherwise."

"Yeah." John said heartfallen. All of his theories about how the guards got their guest list update just became wrong.

Billy groaned. "Can't you just hack it from here?" he asked.

"You forget it's not on the network?" Hunter asked back. "Even if Cypher managed to back hack his way through the commlines he still wouldn't be able to even access the server."

"And how short ranged of a transceiver are we talking about?" Morph asked.

"How short ranged?" asked Morph.

"Really short. Likely about three meters at best." Hunter said, "And if they're smart they'll only switch it on to update. Prob'ly mounted flush above the door."

John tried to reach into his pocket to pull out his yokujin drone, but could not with Mina leaning against him.

"Somethin' up, kid?" Morph asked.

"Tryin' to get a drone outta my pocket." John said.

Mina groaned, slowly stretching as she started moving again. John decided to wait on trying to get the drone out.

"Find anything useful?" Hunter asked once it looked like Mina was wholly with them.

"There's nothing magical there at all." she said, sounding quite relieved. "Saw a summoner and a spirit down below, but they ignored me. I think it was helping someone cheat."

"Lovely." Morph said flatly.

"Got any tricks to get yourselves in?" Hunter asked.

"Can't I just put our names on the list?" Cypher asked.

"Those guards aren't gonna let you kids in." Morph told them. "Even if it's illegal, the casino's gonna be pretty strict about children. Then there's the brothel there, too."

"Brothel?" Mina asked.

"Um." Hunter went nervously.

Morph said nothing, looking like he was suddenly uncomfortable.

"You don't know?" asked Billy.

"So people go there to pay to have sex. So what?" asked John.

"How'd you know the place was a brothel?" asked Hunter.

John could see everyone looking at him now. "Made a call during dinner last night." he told them, "She said the upstairs was a brothel." He looked at Mina, and could not figure out what she was thinking by her expression.

"So how're we gonna get him in?" asked Morph.

"I could hack it." Billy told them.

"Like you did the grade school two months ago?" Morph asked him. "I'd sooner try bringing the kids in for a lesson in sex than let you try and hack a yakuza server."

"You know any illusion magic?" Hunter asked. John thought it an odd question, but then noticed she was looking at Mina.

Mina looked really uncomfortable now. "Yeah. I can make people not see me. " she said softly.

"There we go!" Morph said ecstatically.

"Hang on." Hunter said, waving a hand at Morph. "What do you mean, make people not see you?"

"I… I…" Mina stuttered.

"Why don't we take a walk, huh?" Hunter asked gently.

"Okay." Mina said softly, pulling herself up to follow Hunter outside.

Just as John was starting to think he was going to get stuck with the guys, he saw Mina grab his hand. She was quite insistent that he come with them, and out the door they went. The outside air smelled oddly refreshing.

"So, maybe a bit easier to talk…" Hunter started to say, "Oh, didn't know you were coming with us."

"Me neither." John said, feeling Mina tighten her grip on his hand. He gave her a reassuring squeeze, then they laced their fingers together.

"She always at your side?" Hunter asked.

"No. Not when I take a shower or go to the bathroom." John told her.

"Well, let's take a walk." Hunter suggested, "And maybe you can let me in on your private little network this one time."

"How'd you know about that?" John asked as they walked down the sidewalk away from the RV.

"You're not the only one with hacking skills, remember?" Hunter asked. "Ever since our underground trip I've picked up some encrypted signals between the two of you. Best reason I could figure was you're talking to each other privately. Tried to listen in once, but your encryption was too strong to try and break then."

"You haven't…?" John started to ask.

"I've let you two be." Hunter told them.

"I… I think I'm okay." Mina said.

"I think we should still link up, just in case someone might hear." Hunter told them.

John figured that was a good idea, though he did not use the same encryption with their three-way conversation that he and Mina used privately. They reached an intersection, and followed Hunter as she walked around the corner instead of crossing the street.

"_Feeling a little better now?_" Hunter silently asked.

"_Yeah_." Mina said.

"_So what was it you were trying to say?_" Hunter asked.

"_I can disappear, but it only works on people_." Mina told them, "_It doesn't work on cameras and stuff._"

"_Can you make other things, people, disappear, too?_" Hunter asked.

Mina nodded.

"_So you could make the two of you disappear, but whoever's watching the security cameras will still see you?_" Hunter asked.

"_Yeah._" Mina said, her voice sounding softly spoken even here.

"_How good are you with spirits?_" she asked, "_I know you've summoned some before in a pinch, but just how good are they?_"

"_I don't know._" Mina answered.

"_Got any that can give any help to hiding you two and itself?_" Hunter asked.

"_Easy._"

"_Okay, that's good. Be ready to do that. And any idea what the security server's like?_" Hunter asked John.

"_An almost military grade firewall, two or three people watching._" John said, "_A few IC if an intruder's found._"

They walked on again in silence. Whenever John looked up to Hunter she had an expression of deep thought on her face. It was just before they reached the next corner when she broke their virtual silence.

"_I think I've got an idea to get us in._" Hunter said, "_Just hope I can hack that security server as good as you could._"

"_I can juggle a few nodes at a time._" John told her, "_Maybe if you can gimme access, I could slip in after we're inside._"

"_Good idea._" Hunter said, "_I'll keep that in mind just in case._"

"_How'll we know when we can try to get in?_" asked Mina.

"_I think I've got that covered, but I'll tell you when we get back._" Hunter said.

They walked the rest of the way around back to the RV. Hunter climbed in first, with John right behind her. The stale smell of the inside hit him in the face like a police baton.

"Wanna get some air running in here?" Hunter asked as she took her seat back.

"Sure." Morph said, fiddling with the RV's air conditioner.

"So, how're we getting in?" Billy asked. He looked rather bored where he was, lounging in his chair.

"Okay, here's what I've got." Hunter said, with a new ARO showing up in the middle of the RV. It was translucent and fully three dimensional, and bore a resemblance to the yakuza casino. John could even see the interior floor plans.

"Where'd you get this?" asked Billy.

"From someone I know." Hunter said. "First up, Cypher hacks the guard's links right after one of their updates and adds in names for us to use. Hopefully they don't pay all that much attention to the list."

"What if we do this right after a shift change?" asked Morp.

"Not a bad idea." Hunter said, "That way, if names are time stamped, they can be made to look like they're added earlier in the day.

"Now I'll go in first," Hunter continued, "and wait in the lounge. Firefly, I want you to follow me in astrally. Once I've got the cameras taken care of I'll go down to the casino. That's your cue to do your magic to hide yourselves like we discussed. When you're set you follow Morph right close and sneak in when he goes in."

"Just like that?" asked Morph.

"We've already got that part planned out." Hunter told them.

"What about me?" asked Billy.

"He can come in with me." Morph said. "I can make myself look more native. Should cut down suspicions."

"Good idea." Hunter said. "Now the hard part. We need to figure out what it'll take for the kids to get into the server room." The main and upper floors flew upwards and disappeared, with the basement level floating up and growing a bit larger to give everyone a clearer view of the floor plan. One of two back rooms flashed in red, and John figured this was the server room.

"There's a good maglock and at least two guards there." Morph said, reaching into the ARO and pointing at the hallway that led to the server room. Two yellow dots appeared there. "Maglocks're controllable by the security node. There's also a mess of cameras down there, but at least those are focused on the gambling tables. If the kids are doing a magic hiding act, how're you gonna know they're in position to get in?"

"I could send her a text." John suggested.

"Too risky that way." Hunter said, "I'm just gonna pull an old hacker trick and make the server think it's locked when it's unlocked."

"So what do I do?" asked Billy.

"Be my bodyguard, and try to look scary and intimidating." Morph said, "We'll need to cause a ruckus to distract the guards there."

"And don't take your time with the server." Hunter said, and John saw her looking right at him. "Brute force your way through, grab the data, and get out."

"Just how long'll that take?" Morph asked.

John ran some numbers in his head, considering how long he figured it would take to break through the firewall, find the relevant file and transfer a copy, and clean up what he could of any logs he could think of. "About thirty seconds, I think." he said.

"Beer math, then." Morph said, "We'll try for two minutes, at least."

"Beer math?" John asked.

"Another old trick." Morph said with a grin.

"You take your estimate time and multiply by four." Hunter added, "Then when your superiors cut that in half you can get it done in half that time."

"I don't get it." Billy said.

"You don't have to." John said, understanding this concept.

"Besides, gives you a good timeframe to work with, in case there's something unexpected." Morph said.

"So when do we hit the place?" asked Billy.

"I think this evening." Hunter said.

John's jaw dropped. He was starting to expect they were going to be going in soon.

"What?" asked Billy.

"I think so too." added Morph, "The evening, when we're likely gonna have more people there."

"Why the hell not now?" asked Billy.

"Yeah, I'm kinda wondering that, too." John added. He could not believe he was actually agreeing with the blunt headed razorboy.

"We want more people down there so whatever guards are there can have more trouble." Hunter said.

"Until they get pushed to using guns." Morph said, "They won't hesitate to shoot if they might hit a customer."

"Oh, great." moaned John.

"Relax. It's our asses on the line. You get to go in and out, hand in hand and invisible with your girlfriend." Morph told him.

"Point is," interrupted Hunter, "we're wanting those extra people so we can better get away with a distraction. Might be able to find someone useful, too."

"Okay, whatever." John said.

"Just… after sunset… okay?" asked Mina.

"Why then?" asked Billy.

"You don't need to worry about that." Hunter said, "We'll likely be going in well after dark anyway."

Thankfully Billy had no other questions for a while. About an hour later Hunter was off to a Nacho Mama with a collection of nuyen from everyone on a credstick and a list of what everyone wanted for lunch. She was back a good while later.

After eating their lunches, John and Mina went to the bedroom in the back to relax and burn some time in VR. They had to leave the door open at Hunter's insistence, though Mina did not let that stop her from lying herself down comfortably next to John before going into virtual reality. A few trid programs, games, and some random exploring later they got a message from Hunter that it was time to get ready. It was just after 20.00.

"Sunset's in about fifteen minutes, and they've just done a shift change at the door." Hunter told them as they walked towards the front of the RV.

Sitting back in the middle seat, John let his mind sink into the depths of the matrix. Out of the two guards at the door, John chose one of them for no particular reason. He gave the commlink a quick scan for a data bomb. Finding nothing odd he immediately applied his virtual hands to its firewall. Within seconds he was in, and a quick peek around revealed no agents or other running programs. It took almost no time at all to find the guest list file, and no previous copies of the same, but John did not make any additions yet. Instead John pulled back, leaving a thread of data behind and forced his way into the other guard's commlink first. From within both guard's commlinks at the same time, John added three names to the guest list, and then edited the time stamps for when they were edited back to what they were before John modified the lists. Soon John was back in his body, cutting his connection to the commlinks.

"There, it's all done at the door." John said.

"Shit, that was fast." commented Morph. "What was that, ten seconds?"

"I'll get going, then." Hunter said, getting up and leaving.

Morph looked rather tense as they watched Hunter casually walk in a more roundabout way to the front door.

"Why not go straight to the door?" Mina asked.

"We've been parked here all day. Would look suspicious if they saw her walk straight from here to there." Morph told them, "The way she took will help make 'em think she hasn't been sitting here for ten hours."

John watched, feeling a bit nervous as Hunter talked with the guards. He breathed a sigh of relief when they let her in, business as usual. He leaned back in his chair to relax for a bit.

"My turn." Mina said, leaning back against John's side. About a minute or two later she was back again. "She's already gone downstairs."

"Looks like we're up." Morph said, digging a box of something out of a pouch from behind the seat. "A little facial sculpting, some makeup, and I'll look like my name for a few hours." When he was done he looked like an Asian elf.

John felt Mina take his hand before they stood.

"You make those spells strong?" Morph asked as he headed out the RV's door.

"As strong as I could without really hurting myself." she said softly.

They took a roundabout path themselves to head to the front door.

"Name?" one of the guards asked.

"Shinnosuke Furumoto." Morph told them.

"Jayne Cobb." grumbled Billy.

"Okay." the guard said.

Carefully John and Mina slipped in between Morph and Billy through the door. When the door closed behind them, so too was the matrix cut off from John. He hoped it would not be for too long.

Though the men took their time in the foyer, John and Mina went right off for the stairs down to the casino.

"_My spirit's right with us._" Mina told him over their private connection as they carefully weaved their way around the people who could not see them.

The basement floor was largely an open space, with numerous gambling tables spaced around with many patrons at them. They worked their way along the wall to try and avoid everyone as best as possible until they reached the middle of the back wall where a simple beaded curtain stood in their way with a yakuza guard standing in their way. He had a katana at his waist and an Uzi IV carefully cradled in his hands. It did not look like he was wearing any armor, but John figured it would be rather stupid to believe he had none on as what he and Mina were wearing did not look like it was armor at all.

"What the hell?" they heard Hunter cry out.

John and Mina moved so they felt they would be out of the guard's way when he hopefully moved to investigate the ruckus the others were creating. It was not until after Billy made a badly veiled threat that the guard moved from his post. That was when they slipped through the beaded curtain.

The second door pushed in easily, and they quickly closed it behind them. The room itself was all glaring white, with white tiles on the floor, white paneling on the walls and ceiling, and rather strong fluorescent light reflecting off all of the surfaces. The server was at the back of the room in a single black rack, with red and green blinking LEDs. Aside from the server, the only other furniture was a chrome and glass table with a matching chair pushed right up to it, and the only decoration in the room itself were two matching paintings in chrome, blue , and white at either side of the server.

When the door closed behind them, John could feel even what little WiFi there was inside the casino completely vanish.

"Thirty seconds, right?" Mina asked.

John had to blindly feel for the wire to draw from his commlink to plug into the server. "Something like that." he said, his skin already beginning to feel like it was itchy all over. He also had to feel his way to plug into the server, as Mina's invisibility spell hid his own hands from his view.

With Mina still holding his hand, John sat down in the chair and let his mind slip into VR once more. From there he connected to his commlink, and from there stepped through a portal into the wired connection to the server.

It was like walking down a tunnel, which was solidly blocked off when he reached the server's firewall by a solid white wall.

From the resonance, a deep part of the matrix all technomancers were connected to and seemingly could access no matter what, John called two of his sprites, a data sprite and a crack sprite. The disembodied and jawless cyberskulls floated before him, their mechadendrites twitching as they waited for their orders. They both were given tasks to bolsters his own complex forms to aid in getting into the server. The crack sprite ran its mechadendrites into his left shoulder from behind him, the cables of living metal weaving through his arms and into his hands. The data sprite plugged itself in through his right shoulder, its mechadendrites diffusing to feel like monowire as they wove through his beige robe.

With a touch of resonance of his own to his fists, John stabbed his hands like daggers into the server's firewall. It took three long seconds of applied force to break through the firewall.

The inside of the node was almost identical to the room the server sat in. The only difference was endless rows of filing cabinets that stretched off to disappear in the distance. Also inside the white room of the node was a samurai warrior in black and gray armor. Its red glowing eyes scanned the space where John's icon stood. Everything must have been okay as it ignored him, standing sentry at the portal John had just passed through.

John placed a hand against one of the rows of cabinets, extending his mind to seek out the file Tabby wanted. There was terabytes upon terabytes of data within, and it seemed to take an eternity to find the one he wanted. Just when he thought he was going to have to try another row of cabinets, John found the right file, matching the name and everything that Tabby had given him. He touched the file without opening it, sending a copy directly to the commlink built into his goggles, creating a special folder to hide it in. With a simple wipe of his hand, like how one would use their thumb to clear a smudge on a dry-erase board, John removed the time stamp created when he copied the file.

With a thought, John was out and back in his body again. For a moment he thought everything was okay, but then realized that Mina was not holding his hand.

Then he heard someone speaking Japanese. Before looking he stood, yanking the plug from the server, and bolted from the desk. It was not the best of moves, John realized later, as when he turned back to look he saw three Japanese men looking at the chair. One of them spoke, apparently the leader of the two considering how the other two looked. He cussed at himself for not having been more careful.

"_Where are you?_" he silently sent out, wondering where Mina was.

"_At the door._" Mina replied.

As carefully as he could, John slowly crept around the men to get to the door. Not knowing where Mina was made things really difficult as he tried to silently feel for her.

When the door opened, John almost cried out in surprise. Instead he sidestepped to press himself against the wall. That was where he found Mina, and she squeaked. He also noticed there was no one on the other side of the door.

In a moment of quick thinking, John pushed Mina through the slightly open door and went through as quickly as he could, pushing his way through a sudden flood of WiFi, feeling like he was walking from an air conditioned room into sweltering summer heat. Being less than adult sized was a small advantage at the moment, though they both went tumbling to the floor just on the other side. He was almost as quick back up to his feet, his hands full of whatever of Mina's clothing he had at the moment as he pulled her up with him. Pressing the two of them as tightly as he could against the wall, John held his breath as the door opened wide.

One of the guards stepped out into the hallway, and John saw a heavy foot stomp down where he figured his buttocks had been just a second ago. Thankfully Mina held just as still as the guard looked all around for something.

Apparently finding nothing, the guard said something in Japanese before stepping back into the server room.

Without a word they found their hands, and with a good grip on each other once again they went as quickly as they dared out back onto the casino floor.

The others were still causing a ruckus, with Hunter nearly yelling about some imagined slight, and Morph making demands. He did not bother trying to look and watch as they retraced their steps back out, wanting to get out of the casino as quickly as possible.

Getting to the stairs was not too difficult, though in their rush they were a bit noisy in going up. John found it surprising that no one walking down seemed to take notice of their passing.

There was a couple just reaching the door to head out, and John figured it would be perfect for leaving the casino. When the man went to push on the door to open it, John gave it a good and hard shove. The door flew open, and like the wind John was rushing out of the casino with Mina almost being dragged behind him. They did not stop until they reached the RV, John giving it a signal to open the door for them. Quickly they were in and the door locked behind them.

"Holy shit!" squealed Mina as she faded into view before John's eyes. He could see she was quite out of breath from their run.

"I know!" John returned, realizing only now how hard he was breathing, his heart matching pace.

Mina nearly fell into John's arms, and together they tumbled into one of the RV's passenger chairs. They both started laughing as it fell into a reclining position with a heavy ka-chunk with Mina lying on top of John, and both broke out in laughter again. He had also been so caught up in their great escape that he had not noticed his two sprites still following close with him. With their tasks long done he dismissed them. Later that week he was going to have to spend a few hours re-registering them again.

"I thought we had it when those guys walked in on us!" Mina panted, "I… I didn't know what to do!"

"What if we hadn't gotten off the floor?" John asked, "That guy would've stepped on us with that big foot of his!"

Mina giggled, resting her head on John's chest as they relaxed now. John had to admit that looking back now it was quite funny as he ran a few fingers over the curve of his right ear.

After a while Mina looked up at John and asked, "Think we fucked it up?"

"Dunno." John answered, breathing more easily now. "I got the paydata, so we just gotta deliver it to Tabby and we're good."

Mina seemed to relax some, resting her head back on his chest and saying nothing more.

It was about ten minutes later when John felt the commlinks of the others. After a bit the RV's door opened up.

"… the hell was wrong with that guy anyway?" he heard Hunter ask as she stepped in.

"Not a clue." Morph said as he stepped in right behind her.

"What guy?" asked John.

"There you are!" Hunter exclaimed, and suddenly giving them a disapproving look, which Mina took as a clue that she should get off of John. "What happened? We're just about to settle things after a few minutes, and this guy…"

"Katsuo Sawaruma" Morph interrupted.

"… butts in and wants to talk to us." Hunter finished, sitting down in the front passenger seat.

"Who's he?" John asked, the name having absolutely no meaning to him.

"General manager of the bordello." Morph said as he took the driver's seat. "Japanese fellow in his fifties. Real hard ass and perfectionist, as I understand it."

The description sounded familiar. "Two muscle guys with him?" John asked, fixing the seat to an upright position again.

"I could've taken 'em." Muttered Billy as he sat down.

John scooted a bit so Mina could sit next to him. "They walked in on us. We almost didn't get out." Mina told them.

"Better check things out." Morph said. "See if anyone's hacked the RV."

John used the credentials he had been given to log into the RV's node. The access logs showed nothing unusual, and everything looked like how he had left it. "Doesn't look like anyone sloppy got in." he said.

"I think we're okay." Hunter added, "No one followed us or is watching us here."

"Right-oh." Morph said, starting up the RV.

After a slightly roundabout trip back to the Southwest Plaza Mall, with a stop at a McHugh's for a late dinner, they met up with Morph's friend in the same parking garage. The ork looked rather impatient and pissy where he stood waiting for them.

"Everything's fine." Morph told the ork as he stepped out first.

"Nothing happened?" the ork asked.

"If they even noticed the RV, I don't think they gave a shit." Hunter said as she stepped out next.

Billy was right behind Hunter, saying nothing as he walked off.

"And the data trail?" the ork asked.

John did a quick scan of the nodes around them. He found Hunter's Thundercloud Contrail and Morph's Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit just as they were, and in place of his own Yamaha Katana-11 was the node identification of the ork's RV. "Looks good so far." he said, "Gimme a minute and it'll be fine.

The ork scowled at John while John accessed both the RV and his motorcycle at the same time. He cleared out what bits of data he could find that would suggest the RV was on the stakeout, replacing it all with a copy of what his own motorcycle had accumulated. When he was done he reset the access IDs of both vehicles to their previous settings, leaving his motorcycle with the same data it had accumulated at the mall.

"Done." John said with a sense of finalized accomplishment.

The ork actually looked a little pleased. "Good." was all he said as he climbed into his RV.

"So, where to next?" Hunter asked.

"Got a message back a little while ago about that." Morph said, "We're gonna meet up at Goodfriends."

Hunter and John followed behind on their motorcycles as they went north on Wadsworth Boulevard until they reached Colfax to turn west towards the CAS sector and Goodfriends. But before that they had a border to cross.

"Is something wrong?" Hunter asked the border guard when they did not get through right away.

"You know how late it is?" the guard asked.

"I know it's past curfew, but the kids are with me." Hunter told them.

"It shouldn't be long." the guard said, looking away from them.

"Never had this kind of trouble before." muttered John.

"Now, now, I'll handle this." Hunter told them.

"What was that?" the guard asked, though he did not look back to Hunter.

"My nephew's just impatient, that's all." Hunter told him.

"You're related?" the guard asked, now looking to Hunter.

"They're my sister's kids." Hunter said, "Thought I'd take 'em over for some Native American flare for dinner. Then we got hung up down at the Plaza Mall…"

"Okay, okay!" the guard told them, exasperated, "You can go through."

John let loose a deep breath he had been holding as they crossed over into the CAS sector. It was well past 22.00 by the time they reached Goodfriends, a nightclub that already had a nearly bursting parking lot despite it being a Sunday evening.

"What took ya?" Morph asked as they pulled up beside his car. He had apparently been standing in an empty parking space to reserve it for them when they got there.

"Hassle at the border." Hunter said as she parked her motorcycle next to Morph's car. She took her helmet off before adding, "Kids almost got us in trouble going through."

"Don't know why he bitched about it." John said as he and Mina climbed off his motorcycle. "They've never asked me about curfew before." Mina was right up close to him, taking a hand in hers and lacing their fingers.

"Still getting into trouble?" purred a new voice.

"Trouble keeps finding me." John said defensively, turning to see Tabby walking up to them.

"By the way, thanks for helping out my friend." Tabby told them. "At least we can get business taken care of."

"You got our money?" Billy asked.

"Will you shut up?" asked John, digging up the file to send to Tabby, "I haven't even sent her the stuff yet." With a thought the data file was sent off to her commlink.

"Glad to see you're still as good as ever, kiddo." Tabby said with a smile.

John's commlink beeped with a funds transfer, and his account grew by two thousand more nuyen.

"Always nice to meet good friends here." Tabby said as she turned to leave, "Have a good night."

"I don't care what you do, but I'm going home." John said, slipping his hand free from Mina's as he climbed back onto his motorcycle. She was right behind him as he started it up. They both waved as they drove off.

Not wanting to deal with another border crossing, John took a coyote path he knew but had not used for a few weeks. They had no problems, coming back up on the other side in the UCAS sector, and home.


	12. Run 12 : Winter Wonderland

Run 12 : Winter Wonderland (based on the mission written by Adam Large)

The first of the month rolled around, and John was half awake when he heard the pounding on the office door. When he checked who it was through one of the spy drones planted around the building. He sighed in relief when he saw an image of an ugly troll in an ARO that showed him what the drone saw. It was also six in the morning, too early in John's opinion.

The ugly troll was what passed for the landlord.

Wearing only shorts and his goggles, John opened the door. Knowing the troll would just bust in if he only cracked the door open, John opened it all the way.

The troll was on the short end of average, standing at about two and a quarter meters. He wore nicer clothing than most in this part of Denver wore, though they still screamed slum dog with a barely contained beer belly and smells of marijuana, beer, and fried chicken. His brown hair was greased and slicked back between a pair of curling horns, and his tusks were stained with nicotine. He had several cheap and gaudy looking gold rings on his fingers, and on a similar gold chain was a gold star of David.

"You're late." bellowed the troll.

"You're impatient." John returned, unable to avoid looking up the troll's bulbous nose. There was really only one reason why the troll was even here in the first place.

"What's going on?" Mina sleepily asked from behind John.

The troll sneered.

John transferred what was due for the rent to a credstick and pulled it from his goggles. Clenching the credstick in one hand he none too gently slugged the troll in the gut. For one as big and fat as the troll, it did not mean a whole lot. When the troll looked down, John slapped the credstick into the troll's open hand. "Just slot it 'n go, kay?"

Still grinning, the troll plugged the credstick into his own commlink, then returned it to John. "Cut ya a deal next time." he offered.

"Cut ya next time if ya do." John returned. He really did not like the way the troll looked at Mina. When the troll stepped away John forcefully closed the door and locked it.

"Who's that?" Mina asked.

"Shithead landlord." John said, turning back to look at Mina. She was wearing only her oversized black Mercurial tee-shirt. "Guess he's a perve, too." he added, looking down at her slender legs.

Mina looked down at herself, and blushed a little. Then she turned and went back into her room.

Later that day, with a little badgering, John accepted half the month's rent from Mina. He had forgotten that she had wanted to pull her share of the rent and all.

Close to dinner time a large package was dropped off at their door. After a quick check to make sure it was not trapped or anything, they brought it inside. It took the both of them just to push it, it was that heavy.

"Just what's in this thing?" Mina asked, breathing heavily as she stood upright.

"Not sure." John answered, tearing the packing tape that held the package shut. "Holy shit!" he cussed loudly when he saw the contents.

Mina had happened on a trideo broadcast of Cross Point: Daedalus last week, and had picked up an unusual fascination with the laser pistols that were heavily used in it. It took very little research to find that they were Ares Redline laser pistols. Rather than going to Merlin to see about getting one, John called Lady Jade. In a week's time the arms dealer had managed to get them each a Redline and a spare peak discharge battery.

But that was not all that was in this package, as the Redline itself was about the size of a heavy pistol like his Predators. The bulk of the package was from another laser weapon that John had asked for, along with other hardware. An Ares Heavy MP Laser, a veritable laser cannon that took two grown men to move with any ease, and a beefier turret assembly to mount the weapon on a drone like his Dobermans.

"That's huge!" remarked Mina when she saw the heavy laser weapon.

"Wish I'd called Merlin sooner 'bout that drone." John said, looking over the heavy laser weapon. "How'm I gonna get it all in place?" he asked himself. He barely had the tools to do some of the modifications on his motorcycle, and lacked any kind of heavy lifting equipment. Moving the Heavy MP Laser was going to take a lift, crane, or something. Even removing a Doberman's turret assembly and replacing it with the other was going to be difficult.

"What's this?" Mina asked, pulling something big out of the package. It looked like a large backpack that was already loaded with bricks or something.

"Power pack for the big laser." John said. He figured it would take a little work to get it to fit in the ammo bin of a Doberman. The adapter to plug into the weapon looked like one of the extra batteries.

"Oh." Mina said thoughtfully.

John pulled out one of the Redlines. It felt heavier than he expected, even when he ejected the peak discharge battery from it.

"Wow, heavy." Mina commented, holding the other Redline.

"Looks like these need to charge." John said. "What're you doing?" he asked when he noticed Mina holding a battery, a look of concentration on her face.

"Trying a new spell." Mina said after a moment. "Looked for it after you said we could get these."

"So what's it supposed to do?" asked John.

Mina loosed a held breath. "Plug it in." she told him, handing him the battery she was holding.

John took the battery and loaded it into his Redline. Right away ten tiny LEDs lit up on its sides near the top. Soft enough to not be noticeable in the dark in the distance, but still bright enough to see when you held the pistol.

"You can charge these with magic?" John asked.

Mina shook her head. "It's regular 'lectricity." she told him. "The spell charges it. I could recharge anything 'lectrical."

"Neat." John said with a smile.

With the help of a minor earth elemental they moved the crate over to where John kept the Dobermans. With the peak discharge battery packs came adapters to plug them into a wall outlet to charge them. The data chip included said that the batteries would take five hours to charge, while the backpack battery would take nearly two full days.

The following Thursday morning, after a breakfast of a soy nutribar and some soy milk, John caught a virtual raven tapping on his commlink. To him it was an unusual way to send a message, though it certainly did get your attention that one was waiting for you. Having a guess at who sent it, John hit the accept button of the message.

The raven squawked, "NEVERMORE!" and self erased. John thought he might try to remember to do a data search to understand that part.

The message itself was from a Johnson that John knew, and it was a job offer. There was also a hint at leaving room for souvenirs, whatever that meant. The meet time was at 19.00 at Denim. Despite the fog of sleep he figured he already knew who the Johnson was.

"What the hell is this?" asked Mina, coming out of her room and holding up her commlink. Like John's, it had a virtual raven tapping on it. Unlike a real bird, it did not even flinch as she tried to shake it off.

"A message. Just go ahead and accept it." John told her.

Like with John's commlink, the raven squawked, "NEVERMORE!" before erasing itself.

"Traveling? Souvenirs?" Mina asked.

"I don't know." John said, kneeling beside his Katana-11 and accessing its node. He figured traveling might mean leaving the FRFZ, so he was going to edit some of its information to match up with a different fake ID that he used.

"Who sent it, anyway?" Mina asked.

"Remember that old guy we saw underground?" John asked.

Mina had a confused look on her face as she tried to think.

"When we met Eliza? In her subway car?" John asked, "He's the guy that left."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mina, apparently having figured it out.

"Goes by the name Raven. Some Koshari bigwig." John told her. "Done a job for him once. I guess he's alright."

With expected travel plans, John left his heavier pistols behind, including their extra gear, keeping only his Morrissey Élan holdouts up his sleeves. Mina was a little disappointed that she had to leave her new Redline laser pistol at home as well, but knowing that it was not a weapon the common person could legally have in the first place was enough to make her leave it behind.

They left with more than enough time to spare, swinging down to a Kong-Wal Mart near the Hampden Avenue/Canam Highway interchange in the CAS sector. The store had been rebuilt a few years after Ghostwalker came to power as part of the CAS's effort to revitalize the Aztlan sector. There they picked up a few backpacks that had pockets to allow the straps to be put away and the pack be handled like a suitcase. Along with a change of clothes and some more, they were then on their way. Mina ended up having to wear her pack with John's crammed inside of it because his motorcycle did not have the space to cram everything into it.

Everything seemed okay until they reached the border checkpoint on West Dartmouth Avenue. "You'll have to come with us." one of the ZDF guards said.

"Why for?" asked John as he pulled over to the side. Already he was feeling quite nervous.

"Nothing serious." the guard said, though he did not look at John at all.

Looking back, John saw the guard was eyeing Mina's backpack. "You think we're trying to hide something?" he asked.

"What?" Mina asked.

"If you two'll just come over here, please?" the guard asked.

Bouncing back and forth like a tennis spectator at the net, John could see the guard was still keeping an eye on her backpack. "Can't you just tell us a scanner fucked up?" John asked.

"We're not carrying anything special. Just some clothes." Mina told them.

"Awe crap." cussed John when he saw two more guards walking up. Already he was trying to figure out what to tell them.

"You know what? Fuck it!" Mina cried throwing her pack off from her shoulders. Right away she grabbed the zipper and tore it open to reveal John's compacted backpack and her new clothes. Grabbing John's pack, she tore it open to show his new clothes as well, and she was none too discrete. "You wanna know? Now you know!" she yelled.

Even John was surprised by her sudden outburst.

"Just what's all this about?" asked a stranger from the sidewalk.

"Guess their millimeter wave scanner couldn't see through a layer of fabric." John called back, though he really had no idea why they were being accosted. "Or this guy wanted a peek at a girl's panties." After he said it he kind of wished he had not.

"Just go." the guard told them.

Mina wasted no time in packing their things back up, and in less than a minute they were back in the flow of traffic and on their way to Denim. When they got there they saw Hunter's motorcycle already there. The rest of the parking space was empty, and John parked there.

"We're gonna be late!" Mina cried as they pushed through the crowd.

"Fuck that guard." John cussed. It was just after 19.00 when they got there.

It looked like most of the patrons were the ones John and Mina had pushed passed just to get inside. Trideo screens were turned on with various programs, there was a band on the stage packing up their equipment, and many empty booths. The booths that did have people looked like the same kind of tired wageslaves John had seen the last time he was here.

"You two here for a reason?" John heard a man ask as they tried to rush past the bar. John would have kept on going if he also did not hear a raven squawk at them.

The bartender was not the same person he saw the last time he was here. He looked younger than the woman from John's last trip, though he still wore traditional Hopi clothes, his silken black hair straight and left neatly cut to shoulder length. The raven hopped along the bar, keeping close to the bartender.

"Was told to watch for some young people." the bartender said.

"Well, supposed to meet a Mr. Johnson." John said, "Last time, he called me the Michelangelo of the matrix. She's with me."

"Don't worry." the bartender said with a slight smile. John could not see what he was doing, but could hear the squirt of a pressure hose. "Two buzz colas, compliments of Mr. Johnson." he told them, handing both of them a large glass of cola.

John led Mina to the back, down a flight of stairs, and through a solid door.

"Wow." commented Mina as John lead her into a stylized medicine lodge, dropping her pack next to the door. A warm fire burned in the center of the room, venting up through a metal chimney, and was the only source of light. Like last time, John's vision was obscured a little, and the air had the same warm smell. Furs and Amerindian artifacts decorated the walls.

Valkyrie and Hoss were already there, seated on fur rugs to either side of Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson himself wore a gray suit and wore a Hopi styled mask made to look like a raven.

"This it?" John asked as he took a seat at Valkyrie's side.

"Non." came a familiar voice from above him. Looking up John saw a tiny elf with a set of purple tinted dragonfly wings floating above him, looking down at him. She had bright pink hair that was completely loose this time as it cascaded down.

"Who's she?" Mina asked.

Whisperwind righted herself to look at Mina, tossing her hair back with a flip of her head. "Whoo iz she?" Whisperwind asked back.

"I've been wondering that, too." John heard Hunter say as she came in. She sat down at the other side of the fire, next to Hoss.

"She's my roommate." John said quickly, feeling desperate to find something to say.

"Hmph." went Mina with a scowl.

"If we can give the lovers' quarrel a rest, I'd like to get down to business." Mr. Johnson told them. "As I'm sure you've figured out, I am Mr. Johnson."

John glanced at Mina, and she did not look happy.

"Two days ago a smuggler took a detour into the mountains to the west. While over those mountains, he was spooked by a ZDF patrol and dropped his cargo. He did manage to land where he was supposed to, but obviously not without his cargo. Your job is to find and recover that missing cargo. Payment will be five thousand nuyen, each."

"Five thousand to track down some cargo over who knows how many hundreds of square kilometers?" John asked.

"It's not going to be that much." Mr. Johnson said.

"Maybe if we had an idea." Hoss said, "Them mountains ain't exactly the friendliest."

"Flight recorder data?" asked Hunter.

"Of course." Mr. Johnson told them.

"Alright." John said.

"Oui." Whisperwind added.

"Okay." Mina said sourly.

"If we've got a clue where to start, sure." said Hoss.

"The cargo consists of four cargo containers, one by one by two meters cubed. Due to the weather in the area I'm sure no one's gotten to them yet. They are to be delivered to Mr. Backstreet at The Sacred Rat Lodge in Arvada. I don't care how the cargo's recovered, just that it's recovered as quickly as possible."

"Any risk with the cargo? Radioactives? Toxins?" asked Hunter.

"No, no, nothing hazardous like that." Mr. Johnson told them. "Nothing that'll kill you, but I don't think you'd want to eat it."

"And about where to look?" John asked.

"Of course." Mr. Johnson said, tapping his commlink.

A prompt came up for two file transfers from Mr. Johnson's commlink. John accepted them, checking the data as the files came through. The first one was a collection of sensor data and recordings from an aircraft's black box, the second simply a trideo feed from someone's point of view.

"Glad this smuggler was stupid enough to record what he saw." remarked Hunter.

John brought up the data for playback to look at all at once. As the playback came close to where the smuggler dropped his cargo, John could clearly see where the point of view and sensor data differed, particularly in the existence of a Federated-Boeing Eagle C with obvious ZDF markings from the pilot's view that did not exist in any of the actual sensor data.

"There's something weird about the pilot's video." Hunter said, "I think you're better skilled at this, Cypher. Can you check at time index one-seven-three-seven-four-four, for a few seconds?"

"I guess." John said, though he was not quite sure what to look for or to even do. Taking a good draw of his cola, he started by isolating that second of the playback data, which showed a particularly close approach of the ZDF jet to the smuggler's aircraft, and stretched out the one hundred frames of data to a rather slow speed. Somewhere in the middle of it all, something did not feel right. Thankfully it was not difficult to find.

For three frames of the data, when the ZDF jet was supposedly at its closest, the cockpit was edited out, replaced by a neatly dressed man in an office flipping the camera the bird. And John knew who it was right away.

"You know who hacked your coyote?" John asked.

"Doesn't really matter, as long as it isn't you." Mr. Johnson said.

John copied the second of the three frames of data and made a new ARO image for all to see. "Nope, I didn't." he told everyone. "Not my style, anyway."

"Dean Costello." Hunter said, "Dunno how malicious we should take it. And definitely not Cypher's style."

"How so?" Hoss asked.

"Cypher's kinda extreme in his hacks, I think." Hunter told them, "Either so subtle that you don't know you're hacked, or he lets you know you're fucked."

"What did 'e do, this Dean?" asked Whisperwind.

"Coyote's got cyber eyes." John said, "Dean's a hacker, so he hacked the coyote's eyes and changed what the coyote saw. I've done it several times."

"It iz possible?"

Hunter said, "Cyber eyes are just cameras. Only difference is they feed to the brain and not a trideo screen."

"_Though my magic still works on people like that._" Mina silently added.

"Should we track 'im down?" Hoss asked.

"Non." Whisperwind said, "'E looks too… Putain, quel est le mot anglais? Glaze? Non."

"Greasy?" asked Valkyrie.

"Oui! Merci! 'E iz too greasy."

"No, I don't think we should." Hunter advised.

"At least someone already found out the town this happened near, anyway." Valkyrie added. "WinterLand Ski Resort. Just a few dozen square kilometers to check."

John advanced the flight recorder data. Aside from it obviously being a copy of the original data, someone had edited in additional details on the video. Numerous buildings, a train station, tracks, and more were highlighted and labeled. It looked a lot more like a village than just a ski resort to him.

"So we're going there?" John asked.

"Best place to start." Hunter told them. "Might take a few days. Certainly not going to be all that fun to drive there." She sighed before saying, "And we've got kids here."

"What iz the problem?" Whisperwind asked.

"What're their parents gonna do if they're gone for a few days?" Valkyrie asked.

"And we're taking 'em across an international border." Hunter added.

John sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "If they gave a shit, we wouldn't be here." he told them. When he looked at the others he could see their concern, but thankfully they said nothing more.

"Why not take the train there?" Mr. Johnson asked. "It's virtually an express ride from Union Station here to the station at WinterLand. Just one stop in between."

"Might not be a bad idea, especially with the weather reports from the PCC there." Hoss added.

"Customs here, and likely at the resort." Hunter said, "But if we don't have to make any stops along the way, it'll be faster. And the weather?"

"Lotsa snow in the high country." Hoss said, "And moving down our side of the divide."

"Snow? In June?" John asked.

"Don't forget what Daniel Howling Coyote did over fifty years ago." Valkyrie said.

"Sometimes, and some places, you just gotta throw the rules out with the weather." Hunter added, "There's a few spots in the Rockies that's true."

Daniel Howling Coyote was the leader behind the Great Ghost Dance in August of 2017, one of the first and largest of magic rituals of the twenty-first century, the weather in some places was changed forever. Along the Rocky Mountains there were places where snow was possible any time of the year before the awakening in 2011. It was also one of the notable locations where the regular annual weather was changed forever after the Great Ghost Dance. It also meant there were a few great places for ski resorts that could be open virtually year round.

"Here's someone who might be of help with the train." Mr. Johnson told them, tapping his commlink. "And a little something to help you get going." he added with a second tap.

John saw one thousand nuyen be transferred to him.

"The rest will be paid to you by Mr. Backstreet when you deliver all the cargo to him." Mr. Johnson told him.

"Time to check your IDs for a trip." Hunter told them.

"Why?" asked John.

"WinterLand's deep in Pueblo country." Hunter told him, "Not the sector, but the country out further west."

"Oh, yeah." John went, feeling a little nervous now as he chugged some more soda. To his knowledge he had never left Denver in his life, and certainly never had for as long as he could remember, which was only several months. Merlin had told him the IDs and such he had sold himself and Mina were rock solid, but John had no idea how well they'd hold up outside of the FRFZ.

"There's a good parking garage near the station." Hunter told them, "Our vehicles an stuff'll be safe."

"Then let's get going." Hoss said.

John and Mina left their now empty drink cups with the bartender on their way out. From there they followed alongside Hunter as they made their way along 26th Avenue to the border into the CAS sector on Speer Boulevard. It was a short trip from there to one of the few vehicle entrances to the Hub, and there a parking garage. At least the guards were not tearing apart vehicles today when they went through.

Entering the Hub meant keeping his commlink in public mode. To John it was like wearing a name tag on his jacket, hanging a sign on his back that detailed his personal information, and walking with his pants below his knees. The problem was that even running in private mode in the Hub was a sure way to draw the attention of the Zone Defense Force. At least the automated scanners and drones were too stupid to pick up the commlink built into his goggles even while it was in hidden mode, or even himself.

And at least his chosen identity, Gavin Costner, was removed enough from the one he usually used, even though incriminating data did not seem to last very long anyway. Now whether it was coincidental or intentional, Hunter's commlink gave her name as Brittney Costner. She said she was going to pose as his and Mina's aunt, and they would be step-siblings since Mina did not have an identity with a matching last name that John had.

The parking attendant was a dwarf with the stereotypical long beard, long brown hair that was tied into half a dozen equal braids and reached halfway down his chest. Hunter spoke to him like she knew him, and soon they were in and parking their vehicles.

"You're sure they'll be safe here?" Valkyrie asked.

"Ross knows what'll happen to him if something happens to any of 'em. Besides, the Hub's " Hunter said. "And best to leave the artillery behind."

"What?" John asked, noticing Hunter was now looking at him.

"Kid, you carry more handguns than I ever have." Hunter told him, "I don't know how good those licenses are you've got that lets you cross the borders with all of 'em, but I wouldn't recommend testing 'em 'cross an international border."

"You can lock 'em up in my truck, if you want." Valkyrie offered.

"Fine." John pouted as he took off the holsters for his Predators, Super Warhawk, and Hatamoto II.

"Think keeping the holdouts will be a good idea?" asked Hunter.

John sprung one into his hand, ejected the magazine and handed it to her. "Think they're gonna throw a fit over stick 'n shock bullets?" he asked.

"What 'bout that guy Mr. Johnson suggested?" Hoss asked, "Maybe he'd be able to help?"

"How many extra mags you carrying?" Hunter asked John.

"Two." John answered.

"I'll give him a call."

John pulled his pack out of Mina's, and was just pulling the straps out to carry it as a backpack when Hunter said, "For a hundred he'll stash your holdouts and mags for you."

"Okay." John said, pulling up his sleeves to take them off. He then stashed them in his backpack before hefting it on.

With their luggage they walked the few blocks to Union Station, and John moved one hundred nuyen to an empty credstick. Rather than everyone going straight to the front entrance Hunter led John off to the side. Mina opted to follow along with, adamant that she would stick with John.

In an out of the way spot, they were met up with a troll. He had a long white mane and furry beard, wearing denim jeans and a gray hoodie. His horns were like a cow's, ivory white, short, and gently pointing upwards. "Which one of you's Hunter?" he asked in a deep, gravelly voice.

"I am." Hunter told him. "You Snowman?"

"I am. And the goods?" the troll asked.

John dropped his backpack and dug out his holdouts. From one of his jacket pockets he also pulled out two spare magazines.

"This it?" Snowman asked.

"We're travelling really light." Hunter told him, "Getting' off at WinterLand. Corp playground and all. Don't wanna raise too many red flags 'n all."

"And my fee?" Snowman asked.

John pulled the credstick from his commlink and handed it to Snowman. The troll slotted it, then pulled it and handed it back.

"I'll see you there." Snowman told them, walking off.

"Let's catch back up to the others." Hunter said.

John shouldered his pack before rushing to catch up with Hunter. After passing through a security checkpoint it was not too difficult to find Valkyrie, Hoss, and Whisperwind. The purple pixie was especially noticeable as she floated above the crowd.

"Great, you're here." Hoss said. "We wasn't sure if we oughta just get seats or a private car."

"Private car." John and Mina said in unison.

"Agreed. We'll be able to talk more freely and plan what we can." Hunter added.

They worked out a way to split the five hundred nuyen ticket cost between the six of them, passed through the underground security check station without any hassles, and were soon in a private car that could have accommodated six full grown trolls easily.

John dropped himself heavily into one of the seats. Mina immediately jumped into the seat next to him.

Hoss and Valkyrie took seats at the opposite side of the compartment.

"White noise generator, WiFi screen, not bad." commented Hunter as she closed the door behind her.

Once the door closed John could feel almost no connection to the matrix. Outside of everyone's commlinks there was a new node that felt like was in the middle of the ceiling. Through his commlink it let him connect to the matrix outside of their private car. It looked like this was supposed to allow access to the matrix and discourage hackers. Already John was trying to think of ways he could hack through a bottleneck like this.

"We gonna try a lodge, or a B-and-B?" asked Valkyrie.

"Certainly not a lodge." Hunter said.

"Not when they've all got corporate names to 'em." Hoss added.

"Right. Figured we can't get a foot in the door too easily." Hunter said, "And I don't think it's worth the risk to us to have Cypher hack his way in to get us reservations. Plus they're crazy expensive."

"Just 'ow much are we looking at?" Whisperwind asked.

"The brochure for the resort says they run two hundred for a single room, three hundred for a double or large occupancy. That's per day." Hunter answered.

"And that's three days tops on our advance." Valkyrie said.

"And now to try and work out the sleeping arrangements." Hunter said.

"Do we have to invite him?" Mina asked.

"Who?" Hoss asked back.

"Him." Mina said nervously, pointing to the door. Looking over to see who she was talking about, John noticed a guy looking at them. He was a Hispanic male human, with short cut hair, wearing a très-chic black and plum colored ski suit with the letters 'C.A.' embroidered in gold thread on his left breast.

The Hispanic man looked a little nervous, and after it looked like he had made up his mind he opened the door to their cabin and closed it right behind him. Like the others, his commlink was in public mode and gave up the name Carl Axiom, and a whole lot more, as soon as John mentally touched it. It actually took him a bit of effort to shove all of the extraneous data aside. John got a good whiff of cologne, and wondered if Carl had recently bathed in the stuff.

"Pardon me." he said, "Are you shadowrunners?"

"Yeah, what gives you that idea?" Hoss asked back with a chuckle.

Noticing Mina looking at him, John looked back to her. She had a confused look on her face, and John could only shrug. At least she was not too much of a newbie to play up the act, and John had had it drilled into him that shadowrunners did not advertise the fact that they were shadowrunners, despite what a few of the trid programs portrayed.

"There's something about you." Carl said, "Kids look a little old to be hers." He pointed to Hunter.

"They're my sister's kids." Hunter told Carl.

Carl shrugged. "Doesn't matter. Especially if you were looking to earn some money for an easy job. You can call me Mr. Johnson."

"Well then, Mr. Johnson," Hunter said, grinning and trying not to laugh, "just what do you have in mind?"

Smiling, Carl said, "There's a party being hosted by Celsius Intellect that I have to attend, but don't want to for long. I wanna leave early, and with a 'Corporate Bad Boy' impression when I do. I'd like you to help me with that. I can pay you well for your troubles. Two thousand each, along with a nice retainer. Just need an hour or two of your time Saturday night."

"And how are we supposed to help this 'Bad Boy' image?" Hunter asked sweetly.

John held a hand to his head. Not because the idea might have escaped Hunter, but because of the silly simplistic nature of it all.

"We fake a fight." John said. At this time he also started working his way through the firewall of Carl's commlink.

"Kid catches on quick." Carl commented. "That's the idea. Some of you will be at the party as my personal operatives. They'll interrupt me at the party, saying 'the family' has caught up with me. The others will be 'the family'."

"So 'the family' shows up, we fight, and you win?" Hoss asked.

John ran his fingers over the curve of his right ear. He had managed to get inside of Carl's commlink and was now browsing through various files. Skimming the contents of a few, it seemed that Carl was on the level about being a Horizon corporate dog. Horizon itself was one of the big ten AAA megacorporations, and the one that pushed that number into the double digits. They were based in Los Angeles of the Pueblo Corporate Council, specializing in entertainment but had their hands in a multitude of other things as well.

"What's the retainer?" Hunter asked.

"I'll help cover your stay at the resort." Carl told them. "Up to three nights worth."

Behind his goggles, John's eyes brightened. "Sounds good." he said.

Mina nodded.

"Good enough to me." Hoss added.

"And on completion of the job?" Hunter asked.

"An extra two thousand each." Carl told them with a grin that made John think of a used car salesman.

"Think we should do it?" Hunter asked everyone else.

"Sure." John said.

"Yeah, I'm alright with it." Hoss added.

Hunter apparently waited to see if anyone else might object. "Alright." she said with a nod.

"Great!" Carl exclaimed, "I'll make a call and arrange the reservation for you and the kids." he said to Hunter. "This," he added, pulling out a credstick and handing it to Hoss, "should help cover your stay at a bed and breakfast. I'm sorry, but you will have to stay there. The lodges aren't built to accommodate large folk such as yourselves."

"Seriously?" Valkyrie asked.

John brought up a new ARO and did a search on the WinterLand lodges. After seeing a few images of the lodges, people around them, and such, he could clearly see from the doors that the buildings were not made for people over two meters tall. "I think he's right. Looks like you'd have to duck through the front doors."

"Shit." Valkyrie muttered under her breath.

"Oh, don't worry. The B-n-Bs are still quite nice, if maybe a little rustic." Carl told them. "You two," he indicated to Hoss and Valkyrie, "can pose as the family. Miss Costner, my operative."

"What about us?" John asked, pointing to himself and Mina. He would have also pointed to Whisperwind, but he could not see her anywhere.

"What about you?" Carl asked.

Before John could give Carl the idea of paying them just to keep their mouths shut about the whole ordeal, Hunter spoke up, saying, "She's awakened already, and he's a wiz with electronics. If necessary she could put on a little light show like she's fending off some magic for you, and you could say he's some white hat hacker or something."

Carl grinned, and John was not quite sure if the executive was buying it or not.

"Go ahead and show him something, Kelly." Hunter said to Mina, using the name of her ID.

"Um, okay." Mina said, and promptly disappeared.

Carl's grin disappeared.

John thought to add a little something of his own. He tapped his hand in the air, like he was fiddling with the ARO controls of a program of some kind. From inside Carl's commlink he made it whistle Dixie, one of the stock ring tones installed as part of the operating system.

"Gavin!" scolded Hunter.

Mina winked back into view, looking shocked even though she was not the one yelled at.

"Hey! He wasn't believing you!" John loudly told her.

"What'd he just do?" Carl asked.

"I peer to peer cracked your commlink and made it play a ringer." John told him.

"If I find anything…" Carl started to threaten.

"You won't! I'm already out of there! Honest!" John told him, holding both hands up defensively.

Carl grinned again, and John felt like he was prey for some predator. "You've got a deal." he told them. "I'll see to sending you all the necessary items for the party when I can. See you then." And with that Carl had the door open and was gone. Once the door was sealed shut, John felt his connection to Carl's commlink jump to pass through the node in the ceiling.

Hunter stood and locked the door after Carl. With the push of a button the windows crackled and turned an opaque gray.

"Is he for real?" Hoss asked, still holding the credstick between two fingers.

John saw a commcode get entered in on Carl's commlink and a call go out. When a receptionist answered he knew it was out to a lodge at WinterLand.

"I think so." John told them. "He's making reservations for Hunter right now."

"Did you just hack his 'link?" Hunter asked.

"Sorta." John said matter-of-factly.

"Sorta?" Hunter asked back, "Either you did or you didn't."

"I hacked it to make it play music, but I'm still in it." John told them with a sigh, "And I ain't doin' anything to it. Just listening to him talk to some receptionist." After a bit of listening to the conversation through Carl's commlink, he added, "He's really footin' the bill for us at the lodge, too."

"How the hell'd you manage that?" Hunter asked, "These cars have screens to stop crap like this."

"Guess it doesn't work if you already broke in?" John asked back. "There's an access node to get a signal out. Like I'd have ta hack it before I could hack the 'links in the car."

"Sounds like a screen door on a submarine." commented Hunter. "Anything special we ought to know?"

"I don't think so." John replied.

"Then why not log off from there and call it good." Hunter told him.

"Alright." John said, cutting his connection.

"Why did you accept it?" asked Whisperwind, popping back into view.

There was a loud rumble that John could feel through the floor. With a lurch the train jerked into motion. It was an interesting thrill he felt right now, like they were on their way to another country and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

"Well, we got lucky and can earn some extra cred." Hoss said.

"And we're all getting our rooms paid for." Hunter added.

Whisperwind did not look too happy.

"Don't be scowling because he didn't see you to say he'll pay you." Hunter told the pixie.

"I do not want to work for this greasy man." Whisperwind told them.

John figured he might do a little something for Whisperwind.

"So what's the plan?" Hoss asked.

"Chances are the packages are somewhere near or in the resort." Hunter said.

"And we've got three magicians here who can have spirits helping track them down." Valkyrie added.

"What about him?" Wisperwind asked. When John looked up at her he saw the pixie pointing at him.

"Security support, like me." Hunter answered.

"Leaves me to pack 'em out?" Hoss asked.

"Sorry, but yeah. You are the strongest of us all." Hunter told him.

"Just so long you don't think that's all I'm good for." Hoss said sternly.

"Hardly. We'll all be looking around where we can for those packages. Includes you, me, the kids, even the pixie. We've all got our strengths, and yours just happens to be raw strength."

Hoss seemed to be okay with this. John certainly did not see Hoss as a big, dumb troll.

"Where do we stash them once they're found?" Valkyrie asked.

"The lodge is gonna be out of the question." Hunter said. "Corp property, so security's gonna be a little too much to deal with."

"We could always check with Snowman." Hoss said, "See if he can stash 'em till we're ready to head back."

"If we've gotta deal with the crates." John said.

"Mr. Johnson didn't sound like he'd care if we knew what the contents were." Hunter added, "Just that they got delivered. And moving 'em might draw attention we don't want."

"Spirits can hide us." Mina said softly.

"What I was thinking." Hunter said.

"Now what if 'em crates're outside WinterLand?" Hoss asked, "I noticed they've got a good fence around the place."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it." Hunter told them, "From the topo maps I've seen of the area, a lot of it looks like it's too difficult of terrain to patrol effectively. Chances are there's no patrols, and security lets weather and the wilderness keep people from crossing."

"Won't be easy for the spirits to track them down." Valkyrie told them, "The crates, I mean."

"Would hope that a one by one by two meter cargo container?" Hunter asked, "Would've thought it'd be easy."

"If we had a picture of them." Mina said softly, "It would help to guide a spirit in the task."

"But it's possible still?" Hunter asked.

"Yes, just not easy." Valkyrie told them.

"Then I think we should still try it." Hunter said.

"Guess we ought to just relax and enjoy the ride, then?" Hoss said.

John reclined in his chair and brought up an ARO to a music site. He and Mina shared a stream to listen to a Denver broadcast node as the train made its way through the PCC sector. Somewhere along the line John fell asleep as the next thing he knew they were coming to a stop at the WinterLand station.

Hunter, John, and Mina went off on their own to collect their luggage.

"Here son." John heard Snowman say just as he grabbed his own pack. Turning around, he saw the white haired troll handing him a white plastic sack. "You forgot this in your car."

"Uh, thanks." John said, accepting the sack.

"What is it?" Mina asked.

"Something I forgot about." John answered, stuffing the sack with his holdouts concealed within them into his pack.

Security itself was rather lax on their path, and they had no trouble leaving the station.

They had themselves a long walk from the station to the collection of buildings that made up the WinterLand Ski Resort. At the base of the slopes were a collection of buildings that held cafeterias, equipment rentals, first aid stations, and more. A little downhill from there were two buildings that were the bed and breakfasts and a few others that John figured might be housing for the resort staff. A little further away from the base of the ski slopes were the lodges.

From the outside the lodges all looked rather alike, triangular buildings made to look like they were built like log cabins. At the sides towards the back of the buildings were half domes that he could not see into, and at the front of the buildings was a corporate logo. John could clearly see Ares, EVO, Horizon, and MCT. Not surprisingly Hunter led them to the Horizon Lodge.

The whole resort itself was awash in wireless activity and nodes, far more than John was accustomed to. It took a bit of effort to filter out the excess data, like how a person might try to ignore lots of loud conversations to listen to a single person.

John's legs were feeling pretty sore by the time they reached the front doors. Not to mention that he was feeling tired from the long trip on the train even though he had slept through most of the trip. The way Mina was leaning against him told John she too was feeling just as tired.

The inside looked a lot like the fancy lodge you might expect to see in the trids. The foyer was open to all three floors, looking a mix of grand and rustic at the same time with fake wood, various animal head trophies, and even several more contemporary corporate trophies. The second and third floor walkways were open, but largely obscured by a set of three large tapestries showing the Horizon CEO, CFO, and company logo on a grand scale. John only knew who the two people were because of RFID tags embedded in the tapestries that gave everyone the necessary information. An artificial smell of pine permeated throughout the foyer.

"Evening, ma'am." the clerk at the desk said to Hunter.

Looking around, John saw a few other families and people milling about the foyer or talking to other clerks as they checked in.

"Evenin'." Hunter said wearily. "We've got a reservation. Under Axiom."

"Axiom, Axiom." the clerk said to himself, fingers tapping away on a physical keyboard. "Ah, here it is. Adjoining rooms two-twenty-one and two-twenty-three are yours."

Like the others, John's commlink beeped with an updated passcode.

"You'll have full access to the sunrooms and facilities during your stay." the clerk told them, "The kitchen's open twenty-four-seven for whatever you might desire at any time."

"Thank you." Hunter said as she grabbed her pack.

John simply sighed as he picked his pack up, and he heard Mina groan as she shouldered her own.

The elevator was framed in the same fake wood that was used to decorate the front of the lodge, and though the doors were brushed steel they were colored to look like wood.

"Ready for a good night's sleep?" Hunter asked when the elevator doors closed.

John yawned.

"Guess that's a yes." remarked Hunter as the elevator carried them up.

The second floor hallway was like a large 'U', with the elevators at the base. The carpeting was a rich burgundy and the walls looked like logs. After walking a good ways down they came to one of their room doors. The door unlocked for them as soon as Hunter put her hand on the handle.

The room was largely what John expected. He walked past a bathroom sink and mirror into the main room. The walls were painted a slightly off white and were decorated with real paintings by unknown artists. Two large double beds were pressed against the wall that hid the half bathroom from the rest of the room, with a dresser between them, facing a large open window that gave them a beautiful view of the mountain to the east. At one wall was a counter with a sink, a small soy processing unit, a half sized refrigerator right next to it, and a door for private access to the adjoining room. At the opposite side was a table with a few chairs. Even in here there was the same scent of artificial pine.

"How're we gonna do this?" asked John as he stepped in behind Hunter.

Hunter stopped, paused, then turned around with a single finger pressed up to her lips. She then tapped her front pocket and pointed to John's pocket.

Not quite sure what she was going at, John pulled out the contents of the pocket she pointed at. They included a small electrician's kit and his yokujin drone Laserbeak.

Right away Hunter picked up the drone and handed it back to John. He watched as she pointed two fingers to her own eyes, then twirled them around the room twice, then pointed to the drone.

John woke Laserbeak with a gentle mental prod. In seconds it was fully up and running, and John gave it an order to search the room. The drone's original purpose was to seek and destroy the really tiny minidrones that could easily wreck havoc on larger drones and vehicles. Thos model was a bit better at damaging vehicles itself with its mini-laser cutter, but still just as deadly to its intended prey.

Laserbeak started off by zipping underneath the closer bed while John watched from its perspective with an ARO. It found what John figured was a bug, so he told the drone to zap it. There was a brief red dot on it before it melted a little and began to smoke just a tiny bit. Satisfied the bug had been zapped Laserbeak moved on. Underneath the other bed was another bug, and it was similarly dealt with.

Hunter's feet were like a giant's as the drone zipped past to check underneath the dresser. Near one of the dresser's feet was another bug, and it too was zapped.

"I found two." Hunter said, "How many did it find?" It looked like she was holding two crushed bugs in her left hand.

"Three. They're fried" John answered.

"Should be good enough." Hunter told them, "But we should be careful whenever we leave and come back."

"What are they?" asked Mina.

"Bugs." Hunter said, "Tiny sensors to try and listen in on whoever's in the room. Figured there'd be a bunch of 'em considering the kind of corporate retreat this place is. Really thought there'd be more."

John collected his drone and slung his pack onto one of the beds. "So Horizon's bugging the rooms?" he asked.

"No. Everyone else is." Hunter told them. "And I'd bet Horizon has bugs in the other corporate lodges too. Corporate espionage and all."

Mina sat down in the middle of the bed furthest from the front door. She did not look pleased at the thought of complete strangers listening to whatever she might be doing.

"So what're we gonna do about the rooms?" John asked.

"We share the room." Hunter told them. We can…"

She stopped because someone knocked on their door.

"What the?" Hunter asked as she carefully walked up to the door.

There was a knock again.

"Who is it?" Hunter asked.

"Uh… Swordfish?" came a timid man's voice.

Looking at Hunter, John saw her nod at him. He quickly rummaged through his pack to dig out his Morrissey Élan pistols, without their holsters, and as quick and quiet as he could be was up and over to stand behind the door.

When John was ready, Hunter carefully opened the door. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"May… May I come in?" the man asked.

Hunter nodded to John and slowly stepped back. In front of her was a short chubby fellow with a receding hair line. He wore a dark gray business suit and looked like a stereotypical hacker with the amount of electronics he was carrying. There was an incessant program trying to get John's attention, and when he mentally tapped it an ARO appeared with text saying that his name was Bill Wechsler and that he loved Western trideos and Italian cuisine.

John pocketed his holdouts, then closed the door behind Bill.

"I… uh… was wondering," Bill said nervously, looking back at John before turning his attention back to Hunter, "if you could help with a little favor?"

"Where'd you get that idea?" Hunter asked back.

Bill looked really nervous now. "Uh… The guy you met?"

"Mr. Axiom?" Mina asked.

"That's him!" Bill said excitedly.

John groaned, figuring Carl was the worst Johnson ever. Was not the idea to not talk about stuff like this to others?

"What kind of favor do you need, 'Mr. Johnson'?" Hunter asked. She did not look too pleased.

"I… I've got some bugs I need planted in the MCT lodge." Bill said, "And I haven't a clue how. I… I was wondering…"

"If we could plant them in the other lodge for you somehow?" Hunter finished with the steely confidence Bill looked like he wished he had.

"Yeah." Bill said with a sigh of relief, handing Hunter the bugs.

"What's in it for us?" John asked.

"Well, uh… I don't have much to pay you now." Bill told them. "But I can get you stuff. See, I test electronics for commlinks. If you could give me an address, I could have something sent to you."

"I'll see what I can do." Hunter told him.

"Th… Thank you." Bill said.

John got the door for Bill.

"Weird." Mina said softly.

"What're you gonna do?" John asked.

"Might be worth doing." Hunter mused. "Especially if someone found the packages before we did, I might get some clues there."

"And Carl?"

"Certainly won't recommend him." Hunter said, "Not if he can't keep his mouth shut."

"Even I know not to do that." piped Mina.

"So," Hunter said, sitting on one of the beds, "like I was saying. We girls will take this room and you can have the other."

"Okay." John said, though it looked like Mina was looking a little put out.

"Now just what was it you were talking earlier?" Hunter asked, "That 'If they gave a shit…' line. What's that all about?"

John leaned against the wall and looked down at the floor.

"If you don't start talking, I'm gonna start guessing." Hunter told him.

John said nothing, and it looked like Mina was keeping quiet too.

"Well, for starters I've never heard you talk about any family." Hunter started, "You either sneak out, or they just don't take care of you."

"Fuck it." cussed John, "I ain't livin' with any family."

"So you're a runaway?" Hunter asked.

"We both are. And we live together." Mina said softly.

"Explains why you always show up together." Hunter said thoughtfully. "And I guess you've got your reasons for runnin'."

"Better than pimpin' my ass out." John said.

"I meant from home." Hunter told him.

"I don't know." John said softly.

"Not exactly an answer." Hunter said.

"Means he doesn't know." Mina said.

John groaned. "I mean I don't know. I just don't fucking know!"

"Relax, please." Hunter said more calmly than John was feeling. "Just that I've heard that answer a lot with bounties in the past, and they're always lying."

"They ever sufferin' from amnesia?" John asked sharply.

"What?" Hunter asked back.

If it were not for his goggles, Hunter would have seen John glaring at her. "I can't remember shit from more than four months ago! A runner team found me in a house! No SIN! No nothing!"

"And no one to come claim you?" Hunter asked.

"No!"

There was a knock at the door. John was glad for the interruption. Maybe Hunter would back off from her questioning.

Hunter groaned before calling out, "Who is it?"

"Sswordfissh." came a slurred response.

John pulled out his holdouts and hid behind the door before Hunter opened it.

"Carrll tolld me you could hhelp." a man slurred as he stepped in. He looked younger than Bill, but was probably older than Hunter. He also wore a dark gray suit, but with a touch of blue in it, and his brown hair was neatly cut short. "Ssee, I think my wif'ss sheating on me."

"Easy there, big guy." Hunter said, taking a step back. "What do you want us to do about it, Mr. Johnson?"

John figured his name was actually Mr. Johnson when he felt the man's commlink. Mr. James Johnson, according to his one commlink.

"Get me proof." James said, pulling a large bug out of his pocket. "Juss get thish in my room." He handed Hunter the bug, and did a better job of slapping it into her hand. "It'll get me prooff!"

"And what room's that, genius?" John asked. He still had his holdouts in his hands, but he did not aim them at James.

James turned and nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Your… room… number?" John asked slowly.

"Oh, ah, three-ten." James said. He looked like he was trying to figure out where John came from. James also looked like he had been suddenly scared sober.

"And what're you offering for this?" asked Hunter.

James pulled a data chip out of his pocket and plugged it into his commlink. Right away an ARO appeared detailing a 2068 Suzuki Mirage motorcycle. "It's yourss. Worth 'bout four grand."

"Nuyen?" asked Hunter.

"Yeah." James said.

"Well?" Hunter asked, looking at John.

John pulled some of the details hidden in the ARO and compared it to what he knew about Suzuki motorcycles. "Yeah, if the bike's the same as the data."

"Alright then. Here." James said, pulling out a picture and handing it to Hunter. "I need a drink." he muttered before leaving.

"Must be his wife." Hunter sighed. "One more of those and I'm kicking him out."

"Aren't you gonna plant the bug?" Mina asked.

"Why don't you kids help him." Hunter said, handing John the bug and picture. "You two're pretty good at sneaking around, anyway. Get it done and you can do whatever with the bike."

"Okay." John said, looking at the bug and picture. It was more literally a bug than he first thought, a tiny insect like drone with four spindly legs. It looked like it might have been a Shiawase kanmushi, a tiny spy drone that could crawl on walls and ceilings, but it had been modified with a tag zapper and an improved lowlight camera. The picture was of a woman, though John paid little attention to it before setting it on a dresser.

Mina seemed quite up to it. Maybe it was something to do after sitting on a long train ride, John was not sure, but she seemed to bounce off the bed to catch up with him.

They left Hunter behind and headed to the elevators. It was empty when the doors opened for them, and John immediately hit the button for the third floor. Right away an ARO appeared saying that they did not have permission to those floors.

"Awe." said Mina.

"They had some smarts on this one." John said. Instead of trying the button again he hit the one to open the doors. "C'mon, I got an idea." he told her, leading her back to their room.

"Back already?" Hunter asked when John and Mina came in.

"Just a little hitch." John said as he pulled off his commlink and tossed it onto a bed. "Take your 'link off." he told Mina.

"What's the idea?" Hunter asked.

"Gotta fool the elevator." John said.

"So you're gonna not use your 'link?"

"Got this." John said, tapping his goggles before they left again.

"How'll we get back?" Mina asked.

"I'll think of something." John said as they walked back towards the elevators.

"They don't have cameras around here, do they?" Mina asked.

"I don't know." John said. For a moment he thought about feeling out the signals of any cameras, but decided against that considering just how much signal traffic there was here and the likelihood that any cameras would be wired instead. Looking about they did find a few cameras placed in the ceiling at a few places. "Yeah, I see a few. Prob'ly gonna have one in the elevator, too."

Mina frowned. Her invisibility spell only worked on the minds of people, and was completely useless if someone was looking at them through a camera. "Can ya do anything 'bout 'em?" she asked.

John closed his eyes and focused on the WiFi traffic. Like outside there was a lot to try and sift through. He even called up a sprite to help him, watching as its clawed manipulators grabbed strands of data to analyze. After a minute or two he turned up with nothing on the cameras. "I'd have to hack their server." he said softly. It was not something he was looking forward to having to do.

"Okay." Mina said softly. "I'll ask a spirit to help hide us."

John leaned against the wall opposite of the elevator doors before letting his mind slip into VR.

The virtual environment was sculpted much like the real lodge was. Pulling his beige robe tight around him, his hood drawn, John slipped his way down to the front desk. There was an icon there representing the clerk there, just as if he was really there.

There were more staff icons moving about, and John watched as one went to what looked like an empty wall space, pressed a hand to it, then passed right on through. If John's icon had a face it would have grinned.

John moved over to the same section of wall and pressed his hand to it as well. He totally did not expect to get through, and was personally prompted to provide credentials to pass into the secured part of the lodge's node.

Instead of trying to log in, John dismissed the prompt. He pressed his hand against the wall, looking closely at to try and gauge just how tough of a firewall the lodge had. He really did not like how hard the firewall felt, harder than brick and more solid than titanium. The yakuza server almost two weeks ago felt like it was nothing compared to this.

Trying his best mentally to prepare for the onslaught of pain was futile when he rethreaded his stealth form to bolster it. It felt like his eyes were about to explode from their sockets and his head spun as if he had just chugged a half liter can of beer.

Once his stealth form was cutting edge for even military hackers, John called upon two of his sprites to augment his stealth and exploit forms.

At the last second, just before John's virtual fist hit the wall, he rethreaded his exploit form as well. It felt like the resonance itself, something that many technomancers felt connected them to the matrix and gave them their abilities, fueled John's abilities to incredible levels. When his fist hit the firewall it felt like a battering ram to a castle gate. Already he could feel the tendrils of the node reacting to him, trying to feel for the intruder. He could feel the data sprite working furiously to wipe away the data that lead to John's icon, and ultimately himself.

One more punch was all it took for John and the firewall was breached. He jumped through as quickly as he could.

The node sculpting itself looked horrible and bizarre at the same time. It was a jumble of colors and sounds the like John figured only druggies on hallucinogens and chip heads on a crazy trip would experience. Rather than log off, John focused on the sensory barrage and a way to make some sense of it all. He reasoned it was heavily encrypted, rather than some psychedelic chip trip.

After who knew how long the node began to make sense. By the time John could perceive the node normally his two sprites had left him.

Inside the secured portion of the node was nothing what John was expecting to see. The sculpting looked like the inside of some futuristic space ship, with various icons showing the security cameras that dotted the lodge. There were spots for several user icons to be, but currently only two were logged in. Their virtual personas reclined in floating lounge chairs that appeared as nothing but a glowing white neon outline.

Like he was holding onto smoke, John held the resonance to his stealth form. If he ever needed to breathe in virtual reality he would have been holding his breath right now.

The icons of the two others inside the node did nothing that John took to be out of the ordinary. It looked like he was in the clear, for now.

John walked over to one of the virtual walls and placed his hand on it. He found he could bring up a list of running programs, user authentication information, and more. With a bit of curiosity he brought up a list of the rooms to see what details the lodge had on their room. Apparently Carl had arranged to pay for just their rooms. With a little creative editing, John changed the records just a little to allow the three of them to make charges to the room. There was also a lot more in the way of corporate data he figured Merlin would know someone in the information business who would love a copy, so he sent a copy of that data to the commlink in his goggles and edited the file records of any access.

Looking back at the other two users, John saw them acting like it was business as usual. Considering just how much of a headache it was to get in, John decided to try something to help cut his chances of any detection.

In an instant John had threaded an unknown form, represented by tiny prongs that now protruded from his fingertips. Like tiny barbs they dug into the icon listing the running programs and John began to slightly alter the running analysis software so it would completely ignore him. The change would likely last as long as he was still logged in, but at the moment John had no plans at having to come barging back in anytime soon. In a few seconds it was done.

Finally the more important part, and John now started hoping that this whole endeavor would be worth the pain. He accessed the security cameras that lay between him and Mina and their destination of room three ten. When it looked like the other two were not looking at the elevators, he wiped out their images with a thought.

"See that babe in the Jacuzzi?" one of them asked.

The other whistled. "Love to show her a good time." This made the first one chuckle.

John glanced at one of the other camera icons, and saw what the two men were looking at. A rather attractive elfin woman in a scant bikini was just stepping into a Jacuzzi. They did not appear to have noticed that John and Mina had just vanished from the view of the security camera.

Shifting himself back to the real world was a new experience in pain. His skull felt like it had been used to light firecrackers in it.

"You okay?" Mina asked softly.

"Just a headache." John replied, his throat feeling a little dry. "I got everything set."

"Okay."

John now noticed he could not see himself. He could, however, feel Mina holding his hand just like the last time she had made them invisible.

"Spirit's hiding us?" John asked.

"Until sunup or I call it off." she told him.

Through his connection inside the lodge's node John triggered the elevator doors to open. Once they were inside he fooled the elevator into thinking there was someone on the third floor calling it.

The third floor hallways looked almost the same as the second floor, except for fewer doors and a few guards patrolling or just standing watch. He found it odd that this floor got extra security.

When they reached the room, John temporarily disabled the lock so they could slip in quietly. Once inside they hid near the door.

After a few seconds Mina said, "Spirit says no one's coming."

Turning to look at the room, John felt cheated. It was like a small apartment, with a large bedroom, study, living room, and two bathrooms.

With his free hand John pulled James's drone out of his pocket and activated it. When it sat it on the floor it became visible and scuttled off on its own.

"That's it?" asked Mina.

"Guess it's programmed to know what to do." John figured.

Just as they were about to turn and leave the door lock clicked. They barely were able to get out of the way of Mrs. Johnson when she came in. She went straight for the study and closed the door. John could hear her typing on a physical keyboard, and soon heard a digital voice say, "Connection secured."

"What's going on?" whispered Mina.

"Not a clue." John whispered back. He felt a sudden spike of pain in his head, and could not help but wince.

"Dr. Castillo, sorry it's so late." Mrs. Johnson said, "But I've gotta talk to you."

"Don't worry about it, Stella." replied a familiar voice.

"I just don't know what to do about James." Stella said. "I saw him at the bar again."

"Worst thing you could do now would be to just walk out on him." the doctor said.

"But he's never drank so much before." Stella told him, "I'm scared."

"He's no doctor." John whispered, "That's Dean Castillo on the line."

"The guy that hacked the other guy's eyes and all this?" Mina whispered.

"Yup." John groaned again from the pain in his head, and he felt a reassuring squeeze from Mina's hand. A quick peek back in the lodge's security node showed nothing different going on.

There was a brief but loud electrical buzz before all of the lights completely went out. Fortunately there was still a glow from the windows from the lights outside, and John was still able to see just as clearly.

"What happened?" Mina asked.

"What just happened?" asked one of the users inside the node.

"Dunno, but I think Dean got dumped." John said, "We should go."

"Looks like we've got a blown circuit on the third floor." said the other person in the node.

As quietly as they could they slipped back out the door. None of the guards seemed to pay any mind, and John could hear the two in the node taking their time about reporting the power outage.

The elevator was still at their floor when called, and it took them straight down to the ground floor. Along the way Mina dropped her spells, though she did not say anything about her spirit.

After they got out of the elevator they looked around for the bar, heading over to it once they found it.

"What're you gonna tell him?" Mina asked.

"The truth, I guess." John said. "Just what he needs to know."

"Just that she's been talking to a doctor?"

"That's it." John figured there was no need to blow Dean's cover. From what little they heard it sounded like he was trying to fix their marriage, not break it up.

Mr. Johnson was at the bar, nursing a good sized drink. John took an empty bar stool next to Mr. Johnson, and Mina took the other one at John's side.

"We don't serve kids." the bartender told them.

"Chill, we just gotta tell 'im somethin'." snipped John. For a moment he wondered if a stiff drink would help numb the pain in his head.

At least the bartender did not tell them to leave. He did walk off a few steps, but looked like he was still watching them.

"We got it done." John said, "But there's a catch." He ignored the conversation going on inside the node, which was nothing more than security now reporting in the power outage in the room.

"Wat catch?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Your wife's been talking to a doctor. She ain't doin' anything like you thought." John told him.

"Wha…? Yuz shoor?" Mr. Johnson slurred.

"We heard them ourselves." Mina piped up. "She was talkin' to a doctor…"

"Castillo." John finished. "Sounded worried 'bout ya, too. She's been talkin' to him to fix your marriage."

"I sshould go." Mr. Johnson said, turning on the barstool and leaving.

"What about our payment?" John asked, hopping off his barstool and following Mr. Johnson.

"Later, later." Mr. Johnson said.

They got into the elevator with Mr. Johnson, and he hit both the second and third floor buttons. "Juss lemme talk to her, then yuz get paid." Mr. Johnson slurred. In the close confines of the elevator John could really smell the booze as it seemed to seep from Mr. Johnson's very pores.

"You better." Mina threatened.

They did get off on the second floor and headed to their room. John tripped the lock just as they got there and went inside.

"How'd it go?" Hunter asked, sitting up from one of the beds. She had already changed for the night, wearing a high cut sleeveless top and loose shorts of a matching gray fabric. The trideo player winked out too soon for John to notice whatever program it was playing.

John plodded over to the closer bed and dropped himself onto it. He rolled onto his back, his arms spread wide as he took up the whole double bed to himself. "Major headache." John said as he started cleaning up the trace evidence of him having been in the node. "But we got it done."

"Surprised it took you this long." Hunter said.

"Had to hack in to cover our asses." John said, pressing his index and middle fingers to his temples as he logged off. When that did not seem to ease the pain he just flopped his arms wide again and closed his eyes. He hoped the pain would just go away on its own.

It was not long until he received a call. It looked like he knew the caller, so he answered it, connecting it straight to his mind.

"I hope I got the right number." came a familiar voice.

"Depends on who you're looking for, Dean." John replied, his mental voice a chorus of half a dozen people speaking at once.

"Neat. But I'm looking for someone who did a favor for a Mr. Johnson a little while ago."

"James Johnson?" John asked back.

"That's the guy."

"Yeah, guess you got the right number." John said, using his normal voice. "Heard ya talkin' with Mrs. Johnson earlier."

"Okay. Well, I told Mr. Johnson not to worry about payin' you two boys."

"Firefly's gonna be pissed bein' called a boy." remarked John.

"The redhead's a girl?" Dean asked.

"I think James was too drunk to tell the difference." John snidely said. He opted to not mention the girls' name Firefly had for her ID.

"Anyway, as appreciation for not fuckin' things up, I'm gonna cover it for him." Dean told him.

John accepted a four thousand nuyen transfer to his commlink, and with that Dean ended the call. He then tried to relax, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths as he tried to push the pain in his head aside.

"Wake up!" he heard Hunter say loudly.

"Wha…?" John tried to ask. His head spun like he had just spent half an hour in a tilt-o-whirl, and his eyes refused to focus.

"You haven't moved for half an hour. You feeling alright?" Hunter asked. It looked like she was at his side, but all John had to go on was the sound of her voice and a yellow blob that was probably her hair.

"You still logged in?" Hunter asked.

"No." muttered John.

"Should get this off you." Hunter said.

"I'm fine."

"I doubt it."

John saw a flesh colored blob heading for his face, so he tried to reach up to stop her. It felt more like he slapped her hand, and when she did not stop he tried again.

"Don't fight me." growled Hunter, climbing on top of him to pin him down. Then his goggles were pulled off, his vision beginning to clear. For a surprising second John was staring eye to eye with Hunter. He had no idea how Hunter would react to his blue in blue eyes.

"Whoa." Hunter said softly. "So this's why you're always wearing something."

"They… They're cyber!" Mina hastily said as she came into John's view. Her red hair was soaked and she had a white towel wrapped around her body.

"I already know he's got no cyber." Hunter said as her own eyes lit up. John squinted against the bright light, but Hunter held his eyes open while she looked at them. "At least I can tell they're working fine." she said as the lights in her eyes went out.

"How'd you know they're not fake?" John asked.

"Val told me." Hunter said as she continued to do some kind of examination of John's head. John wished that she would get this over with real quick before she found something else to examine. "She read your aura the first time she met you in Denim. I asked later about it, if you had any kind of implants, and she told me your aura's healthy and intact." Seemingly satisfied with whatever examinations she did, Hunter climbed off of John. This gave him a chance to sit up, though he felt a little wobbly doing so as he turned to face Hunter. His hands went straight to his lap.

"But some are harder to see than others." piped Mina, "Sometimes I don't see your arm as… unnatural."

Hunter looked down at her right hand. "Oh, this." she said, holding up her chrome left hand. "Maybe, but you should still see a scarred aura.

"So, anyway, we know they're not any kind of implants and they're impossible to be a dye job. Valkyrie has seen gene mods in people, and told me you don't have anything like that, either." mused Hunter. "Guess that makes you a changeling."

"How do you know?" asked John.

"You think you're the first changeling I've ever met?' Hunter asked back. "I know how freakish some can be, and some are like you in that you can't tell they're changelings at all. So, anything else different besides the color of your eyes?"

John looked down. "I can see really well in the dark." he said.

"Like cat's eyes implants." Hunter said. Cat's eyes being a type of bioware implant, artificially engineered living tissue used to replace a person's eyes with ones that could see clearly in regular and low light levels. They were so named as they typically had a pupil like a cat's eye, a vertical slit that could open very wide to let in as much light as possible.

"No. I see heat too, when there's almost no light." John corrected, looking down at his hands. "If there weren't any light, it'd be like looking at you in black and white."

"Hey, it's alright." Hunter told him, gently placing her right hand on his shoulder. When John did not look up she put her hand under his chin and lifted his gaze to hers. "I don't give a shit what color your eyes are." she told him, moving her hand to gently hold his cheek.

John smiled just a little, and Hunter smiled back.

Hunter stood and turned to take her spot back on her bed. "Go get some clothes on!" she scolded Mina when she saw the girl standing there.

Mina hurried off to the bathroom.

"Well, it doesn't matter to me." Hunter said as she sat back down on her bed. "Keep it a secret from everyone if you want. I'm not gonna tell anyone."

John smiled as he laid back down on the bed. He groaned as his head hurt from the sudden shift.

"Head still hurt?" asked Hunter.

"Yeah." John said.

"You said you had to hack the lodge. Anything unusual about it?" Hunter asked.

John just stared at the ceiling. "It was really weird when I busted in. All jumbled colors and sounds and stuff."

"You got a feedback filter on this thing?" he heard Hunter ask.

"A what?" John asked back. Turning his head to look was more painful than he expected. He saw Hunter holding his goggles, and the built in commlink she thought he used in his hacking. "Naw, it went away when I decrypted it."

"Shit." Hunter sighed. "If you gotta ask, then I don't think you do. And decryption programs won't protect you from that kind of crap."

"He alright?" Mina asked as she walked back in, wearing her black Mercurial tee-shirt. Her hair looked a little dryer, but was still wet and slicked back.

"Don't know for sure." Hunter told them, "There might've been some psychotropic code in the node to deal with careless hackers."

"Anything we can do?" Mina asked. She looked really concerned.

"Not now, I think." Hunter said. "It could just fade off on its own. Anyway, think you're well enough for a shower?"

"Yeah." John said, holding his eyes closed as he sat back up.

"Get your night clothes and go take one." Hunter told him, sounding all motherly now.

John just grabbed his pack and trudged into the bathroom. There he stripped, relieved himself, and took a long shower. The hot water seemed endless, and it felt good as it drizzled down on his head. Now if only it could have helped clear out certain other thoughts he had.

After a while he got out, dried himself and dressed for bed, which was simply a pair of thigh long black shorts. Feeling rather tired he headed back out.

"Took you long enough." commented Hunter.

"Water felt good." John said. Before he knew it his right foot refused to cooperate.

"Easy there." Hunter said, at his side way faster than he expected. Now he realized he had halfway fallen, and that Hunter had caught him before his head had hit the floor like a basketball. Her cybernetic arm was cold to the touch as she held him, but the rest of her felt nice as she held him.

"What happened?" Mina asked.

"Not quite sure." Hunter said, standing and helping John keep his own feet since his right leg still did not quite cooperate. "You're sleepin' in here tonight." Mina was already pulling back the covers as Hunter helped him bed and sat him down. "Just don't get any ideas, okay?"

"Yeah, sure." John told her. He was not sure what 'ideas' Hunter was referring to, and really did not care. Right now all he wanted to do was sleep.

Hunter turned down the lights as John crawled under the covers. The bed was so soft and comfortable that he was asleep almost right away.

John woke to white sunlight filtering softly in through the curtains, the smells of a real breakfast, and Mina pressed up against his side. He was also feeling a lot better.

"How you feelin'?" he heard Hunter ask softly. Room service had apparently just delivered breakfast as Hunter was pushing a cart up to the table. John also guessed it was still early as Hunter had not yet gotten dressed.

"Better." John said. Whatever had been ordered was smelling very good.

Mina groaned, rolling over onto her other side and pressing her back into John's side. When John tried to slip himself free, she groaned again, this time lifting her head up to look around.

"Glad you're up." Hunter said, "Breakfast's here, so best eat up while it's hot."

There was a lot to breakfast, which consisted of two pancakes, two sausage patties, two strips of bacon, hash browns, scrambled eggs, and orange juice, and none of it was soy based. Extras included maple and blueberry and strawberry syrups, red Tabasco sauce, and real butter.

"How much's this gonna cost?" John asked as he pulled up a chair.

"Not a thing." Hunter answered as she sat down, "Charged it to the room. I think we've got you to thank for it?"

"I guess." John said. He did not feel too bad about eating his fill, and apparently neither did Mina.

"Now don't go thinking I don't know what you did this morning." Hunter said as she doused her hash browns with a generous dose of Tabasco sauce.

"I didn't do nothin'." John replied defensively before downing a mouthful of hash browns.

"I'm talking to Firefly." Hunter told him, "Us girls're supposed to share the bed and in the middle of the night she sneaks off and crawls in with you." She then ate a good fork full of spiced hash browns.

"We didn't do anything!" Mina declared.

Hunter swallowed before saying, "Oh, I know you didn't. Nothing more than probably a healing spell on Cypher."

"How'd you know?" Mina asked sheepishly, toying with her food just a little.

Hunter swallowed a bite of pancake before answering, "I know you can do that kind of magic. I also don't need as much sleep as you kids do, so I was up half the night."

John was not sure how, but decided not to question it about her need of sleep. He was more interested in how good the non-soy based breakfast was tasting.

"So what're we doing today?" Mina asked.

"There's a clothing store in the village so we're going to go get fitted for some ritzy clothes." Hunter told them. "All compliments of Carl." she added with a grin. "If we're gonna blend in at the party tomorrow night we've gotta look the part."

John looked at Mina and saw her looking back at him. She looked about as enthused about dressing up as he felt, and he certainly did not feel too enthused about it.

"And if Carl complains?" John asked.

"I'm sure I can convince him." Hunter said with a wink.

After breakfast they took turns getting dressed in the bathroom.

"Are you packing your holdouts?" Hunter asked as soon as John was out of the bathroom.

"Yeah, why?"

"Take 'em off. You're not gonna need 'em. We're tryin' to be low-key here, ya know."

"You sure?" John asked.

"You're gonna have to take your jacket off for the measurements. They'll be quite obvious then." Hunter told him.

"Alright." John conceded, taking his leather jacket back off to take the holsters off.

"And wear your shades." Hunter added, "Those goggles around here really stand out 'round here. You can always say they're prescription if anyone asks."

"Yes, yes." groaned John.

Then they were off, acting like they were family as they headed out of the lodge.

"I wish we didn't have ta do this?" John asked as he trudged behind Hunter.

"Think of it as a stealth program." Hunter told him, "A suit will make it so you blend in with the crowd and you're not noticed. Go in wearing that," she turned, pointing to his black leather jacket, jeans, and sneakers, "and you'll stand out like Billy's icon in a school's node."

John sighed. He did not think he could argue when she put it that way.

"What's it gonna cost?" Mina asked.

"It's gonna cost Carl quite a bit. The bill's gonna be charged to the room, and we're not gonna skimp on the quality."

They walked in silence until they reached the tailor's.

"Hi, We've got an eight-thirty for a fitting." Hunter told the receptionist. The receptionist was an attractive looking elf woman with silken black hair and dark eyes. Her commlink gave the name Stefanie Drennen.

"Mrs. Costner?" Stephanie asked.

"Miss." Hunter correct.

"I'm sorry." she said. "We're ready for your fitting. If you'll come with me, please?"

John followed the others to a fitting area in the back. There Stephanie showed them three different short pedestals for them to stand on. There was someone to each of them to take their measurements.

"This for the Celsius Intellect party?" one of the tailors, a thin looking human male with strawberry blond hair asked. His voice sounded a little odd to John, and his commlink said his name was Sean Peake.

"It is." Hunter said.

"We'll have them made for you by then." Sean told them as he took John's measurements.

"Am I gonna have to wear a tie?" John asked as he spread his arms out wide for Sean.

"They don't call it a 'black tie affair' for nothing." Sean told him, "Now, if you could take a few more really deep breaths, please? We don't want you popping any buttons now, do we?"

"Now if we could take these off…" the other person said, reaching for John's sunglasses.

"No!" John cried out, startling her. "They're, uh, prescription."

"It's okay." Hunter told them, "He's gotta wear them all the time."

"At least they don't look too cheap. We can work around them." the Sean said, then to John a little more softly, "Best to go with a black suit to match those shades."

"I just hope I don't look too dorky in this." John returned.

"I think you'll look great." Sean told him. "I think most everyone's going with black tomorrow night. And you'll look like that Pierce Brosnan guy when he played James Bond."

"You are so in love with that old actor." John heard a lady say. He had no idea who this person was.

"But he's just so dreamy." cooed Jack. He then fiddled with his commlink for a moment, then an ARO with an image of a dark haired human showed up. John had to admit that the man in the image did bear some resemblance to himself. Obviously the hair color was completely wrong, and after a second look so were the eyes.

"Now here's a sim of what you'd look like in a suit." Jack said, and a new ARO appeared. This one was a fully three dimensional representation of John in a traditional looking, silken black, three piece, single breasted suit with a matching black tie.

John had to admit it did not look too bad. "Can we tweak a color?" he asked.

"Sure, but we wanna make sure it's in good taste." Jack told him, pressing a few buttons on his commlink and holding it up for John to use.

Right away John selected the shirt, which was a default snow white in color. The color controls were the same as for any computer from the last century, so John cut out the red and green entirely and reduced the blue by a quarter.

"Oh, now that does look sharp!" exclaimed Jack.

"Can I get down now?" John asked.

"Oh, sure. We're done here." Jack told him.

John relaxed, and was glad to hop off his pedestal.

"I'm done, too." Mina said, hopping over to John's side.

"You two go ahead and hit the slopes, then." Hunter told them, "Don't forget why we're here, either."

"Got it!" Jon called back as he and Mina made for the exit.

"What's she gonna do?" Mina asked.

"Dunno, but I wanna try snowboarding. We can look along the trails." John told her.

There was a single rental shop at the mountain base. They had no problem getting some rather colorful thermal coats as well as lift tickets and snowboard rentals for the day and night. The snowboards came with matching helmets, and to their surprise a trode net built into them. After a few minutes to configure the trodes to their brains, and a few exercises to make sure they were working properly, they went to hit the slopes. As soon as he could, John had his trodes disabled, and though things were feeling a little sketchy through them John did make a private connection between himself and Mina.

They took the lift straight to the top, the summit called Mary Jane. From there they both agreed to try the easiest run aptly named Milk Run. It was a relatively even and almost straight run down to the base.

Their first run was not as easy as John had hoped. He felt he looked quite stupid as he tried to snowboard down, his arms waving about and his balance about as stable as a drunken troll on roller skates. Mina had it worse, though, and about half way down she slipped around backwards, and then fell onto her back with such speed she flipped feet over head to land on her face.

An hour later they got a message from Valkyrie, letting them know they were also trying the slopes to see about finding the packages. After a few more hours of looking and finding nothing, though John did find out how hard the trees were one time by falling and sliding head on into one, they stopped for an hour at a cafeteria at the base for lunch.

John and Mina continued on later, carefully trying other runs. Later that afternoon they got a mass message from Whisperwind that she had found the packages in the trees off of a run called Dunkelzahn's Rift, just past someplace called Twisty Cut. John was not too thrilled at going there as the Dunkelzahn's Rift run was marked with a black diamond, meaning it was an expert run.

Wanting to help out the team ultimately won out, and they carefully made their way down the run. They were met by Valkyrie, who showed them the spot.

"So what all is this?" John asked, staking his snowboard next to a tree so it was out of sight from the run.

"Three of the four crates." Valkyrie said. "Hoss has already been by and taken half of these cylinders down. We're gonna leave the crates, but take all their contents down in a few trips."

Some of the trees looked busted and damaged from being hit by the crates, but otherwise looked intact. All three of them already had been opened, with one having five aluminum cylinders each a meter long within it. Another had various packages that seemed to have a mix of smells that made John think of a bad batch of potpourri. The third had various containers, one of which made John wonder what the contents were with the label 'Dragon' on one that was clear and filled with a yellow liquid. As cold as it was, he found it odd it was not yet frozen.

"Here." Valkyrie said, handing John and Mina both four packages from the second container. John had no idea what they were beyond the fact they looked like dried plant stuff. "Take these down to the WinterLand B&B, room nineteen. Hoss will be waiting for you there. We're gonna stash everything in our rooms before we ship out."

"I can call a spirit to help." Mina said softly. "It could carry a few things."

"Just don't push yourself too hard." Valkyrie advised.

Mina made no gestures or spoke anything. She just had a look of extreme concentration on her face for a few seconds. Next to her appeared a large humanoid thing made of swirling mist. With a thick arm it reached out and collected several packages from the third container, including the one labeled 'Dragon'.

"By the way, where's Hunter?" Valkyrie asked.

"Keeping up our cover." John said as he tried to fit all of his four packages inside his coat. "Mr. Axiom's a total newbie at this. Told two of his friends 'bout us."

"He's worse than me." Mina added.

"Great." groaned Valkyrie as she collected several more packages for herself to carry.

"She could look for the fourth package." Whisperwind suggested, floating down from high above them.

"I'll drop her a line." John said, already mentally preparing a text message to send to her.

With his message sent, their packages secured, and their boards back on their feet they went back to the run, carefully making their way down. Mina silently told him that her spirit was also concealing them, so hopefully people would not be paying too much attention to them.

It seemed to work out alright. Once at the base they secured their boards at some complimentary lockers that came with the rentals, then hiked their way down to the bed and breakfast Valkyrie had told them.

If the lodges were high class, the bed and breakfasts were certainly rustic. Though they were made of the same fake wood as the lodges, they lacked the luxurious feel. Still, despite the luxury, John felt a homey warmth to them that made him feel like staying here would not have been so bad.

The people in the bed and breakfast seemed to ignore them as they made their way to the room. Even the spirit was ignored as it floated behind them, the packages it carried held within its body. Room seventeen was one of two larger rooms at the end of the hallway on the ground floor, with a door easily large enough to accommodate a troll.

"Glad y'all could make it." Hoss said when John opened the door.

"How'd you know we're here?" John asked.

"I asked my spirit to let him see us." Mina told him, "Same way so we could see each other while it hid us."

"Oh." John said, not quite understanding what she meant by it.

They handed Hoss the packages they had carried down, and Mina's spirit deposited what it had carried where Hoss had put the others.

"Guess we'll go back up and grab more of the stuff." John said.

"See ya then." Hoss called after them.

They had just stepped out of the bed and breakfast when they ran into Valkyrie. "Glad I bumped into you." she said, "You kids go have fun. Hoss, Whisperwind, and I can handle the rest in another trip easy."

"You sure?" John asked. "Thought there'd be more for us to do."

"Well, you can always hack the resort's security and make sure we've not drawn any attention. And you could always keep an eye out for the fourth crate." she told him.

"Got it."

It was not until they were close to the lifts at the base when Mina dismissed her spirit. There they spent a few more hours snowboarding the slopes and not doing too bad a job at it.

The sun had long since set by the time they returned their snowboards and helmets. John's whole body ached as they walked back to the Horizon lodge.

"Glad you finally made it back." Hunter said when they trudged in through the door. "Dinner for you two should be up in about half an hour." She was already dressed for bed and lounging on her bed as an older version of a Suki Redflower trid played. "Oh, and don't worry, there weren't any new bugs in here."

"How'd you manage that?" asked Mina as she peeled off her jacket. "Having dinner planned for us?"

"After sunset I called the kitchen, asked them to start cooking some hamburgers as soon as you came into the lodge." Hunter said, "Your commlinks did the rest."

John sighed as he hung his jacket up near the door. He and Mina then relaxed together on the other bed until dinner came. After dinner they took turns in the bathroom to shower and ready themselves for bed. This time Mina climbed in with John and curled up at his side like this was the normal thing for them. Hunter said nothing, but John did notice a look of concern on her face.

"Any luck on the fourth crate?" John asked when the third Suki Redflower movie started.

"Not quite." Hunter said, "Was a little too busy dealing with Derek."

"Oh? Didn't know you were into girls." John said.

"Oh shut it." Hunter returned half playfully, "Derek was my way into the MCT Lodge today. Just a bit too friendly playful, though. He just wouldn't stop."

"And the bugs?" John asked.

"Oh, I planted 'em alright. I'm listening to them right now. Anything that might give us a clue to where it might be." Hunter told him.

They said little more as they watched the late night talk shows and raided the mini-fridge for some drinks. Somewhere in the middle of the Late Late Show John fell asleep. He awoke to soft sunlight coming in through the window, Mina pressed against his side and still asleep, and a deep muscle ache throughout his whole body.

John could not help but groan as he tried to move. He tried to carefully slip free from Mina, and thankfully she rolled over so he could free his arm. Doing his best not to jostle Mina he slid to the edge of the bed to sit up.

"Not feeling too well?" he heard Hunter ask softly.

"I feel like I was a punching bag." John said.

"Did you pack a swimsuit?" Hunter asked, "You could go soak in their Jacuzzi."

"I don't even have one." John told her.

"Well, there goes that idea."

"Owe, owe, owe, owe." cried Mina as she began to sit up.

"You hurting, too?" John asked.

"What'd you do to me last night?" Mina asked back. She tried to stretch her arms wide, but it looked like she was too sore to get her hands too far out.

"He didn't really do anything. Pretty much like last night." Hunter said.

"I hurt all over." Mina said softly.

"Too much snowboarding, I'll bet." Hunter said, waving her hand about like she was working an ARO. "Why don't you two just relax. Got breakfast and something to help with the pain on the way up."

Hunter did most of the work setting up blankets and pillows, along with some extras provided by the lodge, to try and make one of the beds extra comfortable to sit up in while relaxing.

Breakfast was the same as yesterday, though this time John was quite liberal with the strawberry syrup on the pancakes. After that was a hot shower before some liniment that was supposed to help with their aching muscles. Once they were settled to try and relax Hunter left them to try and help the others track down the missing package.

"Tryin' to relax is so boring." Mina said after a few hours, resting her head on John's shoulder.

Before John could say something there was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it." groaned Mina as she climbed out of their bed.

John reached for his sunglasses anyway.

"They're our clothes for the party!" exclaimed Mina as she lead a rack with three hanging packages hanging from it. Jack was right behind it.

"Yeah, your aunt stopped by." Jack said, "Said you two'd be here hurting from a whole lot snowboarding yesterday."

"Yeah, we are." John groaned with a little extra emphasis as he stood.

"Oh, there's the handsome fella." cooed Jack. John gave him a weird look back.

"Oh relax. You're a little young for me, anyway." Jack told him. "Well, I'd have been here sooner, but your aunt told me you didn't have any suits for the Jacuzzi. Well, it ain't anything special, but…" He pulled out a box that John had not noticed was on the bottom of the rack, and opened it up to show them a pair of swimsuits. John's were simple black trunks and Mina's looked like a two piece that was far from being skanky for a twelve year old.

"You'd just be amazed how often we've gotta repair torn swimsuits here." Jack said.

"How'd you manage this?" Mina asked.

"Well, we had your measurements and it was only a quick nip tuck on some extras we had lying around." Jack said with a grin. "Well, looks like you two got plans now, so I'll just get a signature here and be on my way."

John signed his fake name on Jack's commlink.

"Feel up to it?" John asked after Mina had closed the door.

"Sure."

John changed in the room while Mina changed in the bathroom. With a few of the hotel's towels and their commlinks in hand, they made their way to the lodge's sunroom that had the Jacuzzis. He was really glad his eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses as he could not stop from checking out Mina from head to toe.

After a few hours of hot water, lots of bubbles, good music, and some good drinks, Hunter caught up with them. Feeling better they went with her back up to their room. The Jacuzzis had done a world of good as John did not feel sore at all as they headed back.

"We've got good news and bad news." Hunter told them as she closed the door behind them. "Good news is we know where the crate went and what's in it. Bad news, is that it's a dozen wine bottles and they're gonna be drunk at the party tonight."

"So we gotta steal the bottles out from under their noses?" John asked.

"Well, Val and Whisper think they can handle that, but we're still gonna need you to hack the Celsius node to make sure their security cameras don't catch us or anything like that. Think you could hack it in time?"

John looked at the chronometer on his commlink. "When's the party start?" he asked.

"Six P.M."

John groaned. "I gotta speed hack it. Like last time."

"Sure you'll be okay?"

"I think so." John said as he pulled his goggles on. He climbed back onto the bed and into the mess of pillows they had before slipping his mind into VR. He really hoped that he would not have to call on his sprites after this time. There was no clue how long he was going to have to spend to re-register their services after this job.

Finding the Celsius Intellect node was not too difficult at all, though the sculpting was a little different than the Horizon Lodge was. Finding the portal to break into the node was not as difficult, though from examining it it looked like it was going to be just as hard.

First John rethreaded his two complex forms to try and make it easier to break through the firewall, then he called up his crack and data sprites to strengthen him even more. When he was ready he pressed his hands to the portal. Within seconds he was through.

Inside was the same psychedelic sensory display that assaulted John when he broke into the Horizon node. Right away he let his exploit threading drop to rethread another that seemed to let him naturally decrypt nodes and such. It did not seem to help much as it took just as long to make sense of this node.

On the plus side he did not feel like he had a splitting headache.

Celsius Intellect's node had the same interior sculpting as the Horizon node. There were five other user icons logged in this time, and none of them seemed to be even aware that John had hacked the node.

Going over to a familiar icon, John found the list of programs they were running. He threaded a form to disarm their analyze program, and after what felt like an eternity he had the program neutralized.

A quick look around as he tried to track down all of their security sensors, John found more data that looked interesting, similar to what he had found in Horizon's node. He made a copy for himself, then quickly edited the access log to the file to remove the evidence it had even been looked at. Amongst the data was a layout of the building's security sensors inside and out. It looked like the conference hall where the party was going to be had no security monitoring inside. John wondered if Celsius Intellect was counting on other security measures to keep trouble down.

An incoming call to his goggles almost made John wet himself, assuming he could actually urinate in virtual reality. The call was from Hunter, so he answered it.

"You okay kid? You seem to be taking a while for a quick bust in." Hunter said.

"Feelin' fine, but I had the same light show like last time." John told her, "And I got the stuff."

"What about the packages?" Hunter asked, "You know, the ones we're trying to deliver?"

"Oh, those!" He had forgotten about the wine bottles. A quick scan through the data for the party turned up a few mentions about several bottles of '54 Shiraz that MCT had donated for the party that was listed as currently being in the kitchen. There was no information about RFID tags, so John had no way to track them.

"They're there for the party, but they ain't tagged. They're in the kitchen right now." he told Hunter.

"Perfect. See if you can find some crap tags and edit them in." Hunter told him. "Maybe we can mess them up a little and make it easy for us?"

"I think I got it." John said, pulling up a broad list of tagged items that were in the lodge. He found a dozen handcuffs that were in storage and moved their tag information to the wine bottles. "Done." he said when the process was completed.

"And security?" Hunter asked.

"Already got maps."

"Good. Log off, but make sure to clean all your work."

There was not a whole lot to do, John noticed. He wiped out the access logs for his break in presence as well as when the tag data had been changed. When everything was done, John noticed that a Manservent-III drone was already carrying a box of handcuffs to the kitchen. Feeling good about his work he logged off.

"What you smiling about?" Hunter asked as John's perceptions returned to the real world.

Cutting himself off from the matrix entirely, John sat up. "Automation's gonna kill 'em." he said, still grinning, "They already had a butler drone carrying what it thinks are wine bottles to the kitchen."

"Good." Hunter said, smiling. "The others can grab the bottles then."

"Where's… Firefly?" John asked.

"She's already changing." Hunter told him, handing John one of the two remaining hangers from the rack. "You can go into the other room to change."

John took his clothes and walked into the adjoining hotel room that Carl Axiom had reserved for them, but they had never used.

The suit from the tailor shop was literally a complete change of clothes, right down to his underwear that was a matching dark blue to his dress shirt. So he went to the bathroom and stripped completely, made sure he was dried as best as possible, and spritzed some of the complimentary cologne he found to cover up a bit of a chlorine smell. Leaving the used towel behind he went back and put his suit on. He could not quite get the tie right, and not being able to figure how to tie it he left it hanging around his neck.

When he was ready he knocked on the door to their hotel room.

"It's okay." he heard Hunter say.

John carefully stepped back into the room.

Hunter was already dressed for the party, and Whisperwind was with her. Hunter's hair was tying itself into a French braid pony tail, draping itself over her left shoulder. She wore a silky black evening gown that hugged her body well. His heart fluttered like the first time he saw her, she was looking that pretty. It did not even bother him that her left arm was chrome and not flesh and blood, the separation between flesh and chrome being covered by a lone and frilly shoulder strap. Even knowing that half of her right arm was also cybernetic, John could not see the change from flesh to artificial.

As quickly as he could, John grabbed his goggles and put them on to cover his eyes.

"How're you doin' that with your hair?" John asked.

"Iz my magic." Whisperwind replied.

"Firefly's still in the bathroom getting ready." Hunter said, sitting down to a mirror to do some last minute touchups with her makeup and to tie the end of her ponytail so it would not unravel. "She should be out in a minute." She did not even look at him.

"When'd you come in? And how?" John asked.

"A few minutes ago, through the window." Whisperwind said. "Oo la la." she cooed when she turned around and saw John, "You are very élégant."

"You missed him earlier." Hunter said, "Give him a few years and he's gonna be quite the hunk."

Whisperwind had a look in her eye that made John think she was already fantasizing what he would look like when he was older. "The suit iz nice, but that thing will not do." she said.

"What thing?" John asked.

"This." Whisperwind said, floating right up to his face and tapping his goggles. "The color iz not right."

"Not like I got another pair." he told her. "My shades may make the look, but they ain't got the hardware." It was true as far as John used his goggles to hide his technomancer abilities.

"Un moment." Whisperwind said, and it looked like she staring at his goggles. "There." she said after a while.

John went to the mirror to see what the purple pixie had done. What he saw surprised him, as his goggles were now a black that matched his suit, and looked a little more streamlined. With a thought he touched the commlink built into them, and was relieved to find it was functioning just fine.

"Does it not look better?" Whisperwind asked.

"Whoa, thanks!" John exclaimed.

"How do I look?" he heard Mina ask.

John turned to look, and was shocked.

Mina wore tights, a high cut tankini top that left much of her back exposed, and long gloves that reached past her elbows, all of a shimmering snow white material. Over this she wore a flowing gossamer skirt that reached down to her calves and was cut two thirds of the way up the front, and a matching loose cut blouse with long flowing sleeves that left her shoulders bare, both a matching light rose pink in color. For shoes, she wore closed toe heels that were also snow white and almost brought Mina eye to eye with John.

John had no idea what to say. He felt a little outclassed in his three piece suit.

"I think you look lovely." Hunter said, "At least, I think that's what he wants to say."

"Oui. You are very beautiful." Whisperwind added. Was it John's imagination, or did the pixie look a little jealous?

Then John realized his mouth was hanging open, and he quickly closed it. "Yeah," he managed to say, regaining some composure, "you look beautiful."

It looked like Mina blushed, though it was hard to tell as she turned her face away.

"Now we need to fix you up." Hunter said, turning away from her mirror. John stood still while she tied his tie for him. After a little fussing she got it tied for him, and pinned to his shirt by the clip he had no idea what it was for.

"'Bout time we got going. We don't wanna be late." Hunter told them.

Whisperwind disappeared as they left. He figured she was close by as they took the elevator down and then left the lodge.

"I think you're gonna be a lucky guy tonight." Hunter said.

"How's that?" John asked.

Hunter held her arm out, and after a moment of wonder John, and noticing how a few other couples were walking, looped his arm with hers. At his right he and Mina did the same thing.

"Because you get to escort two lovely ladies in on your arms." Hunter said cheerfully.

It was well past six in the evening when they reached the Celsius Intellect Lodge. A quick check of their commlinks was all it took to let them in. So far Carl Axiom had held up his end of their deal.

"The others got kitchen passes good for a few hours." Hunter said softly. "They'll come in that way to get the package."

The party was already in full swing in the main room, and it seemed quite boring. Oddly enough to John, it also seemed a lot like those trideos before the hero busted in for an action scene. Hunter went off on her own, leaving John and Mina to their own devices.

Not having had dinner yet, they went straight for the buffet line.

"I thought we had some wine for this." John heard someone say.

"I'm sorry, we've had a mix up." the bartender said, "Right now we're trying to find it."

John grinned as he sampled one of the hors d'oeuvres right from the buffet. At least the food was tasty. As high class as this event was, none of it was soy based.

With a sampling of all sorts of foods, John and Mina left the buffet to walk among the crowd. Music was provided by a live jazz band with real instruments, and it sounded lousy to the both of them so they avoided the dance floor.

"Who's that?" Mina asked, pointing off somewhere.

Looking to where Mina was pointing, John saw a new elf in the crowd. Being an elf was not anything odd, but among the majority of black suits he really stood out in his glacial blue suit that looked like it was making its own fog bank with an aurora.

"Not a clue." John told her.

Intentionally losing track of the elf was a little difficult. After a bit Hunter caught back up with them.

"It's time." she told them.

"And the stuff?" John asked.

"Taken care of." Hunter said.

Carl Axiom was talking with some other executive big wigs as they walked up. Hunter navigated around behind Carl and whispered something in his ear. Carl promptly excused himself.

"That's it." Hunter said, "I'm gonna go hit the buffet before we leave."

John watched Carl as he made his way to the kitchen, all the while working his way back into Carl's commlink. He had not forgotten that he had wanted to help out Whisperwind a little ere.

Hoss showed up at the kitchen door, and Carl went right into action with some kind of martial arts like move, and in two blows Hoss went down. John had just gotten into Carl's commlink as the executive hurried past the down but not out troll. Hoss was quick to get up and out of the room.

From the reactions John heard, there were many who seemed impressed with Carl's feat.

"That was so fake." Mina said, "How're they gonna believe that?"

"Guess they're too stupid to know a real fight?" John asked.

Mina frowned.

From inside Carl's commlink, John saw five transfers of two thousand nuyen go out, with one of them coming to his own commlink. Right away John made a sixth transfer, tagging Whisperwind's commlink. The timing was perfect to coincide with the others, and when it looked like Carl had not even noticed the extra payment going out, he logged off.

"Would you please leave me alone?" John heard someone ask, and noticed it was another person in a black suit talking to the elf in the ice blue suit. Somewhat curious, John walked over to him.

"What's his problem?" John asked the elf. Now that he was closer he was able to get a commlink identification, and a name of Wharez Waldo. Almost without thinking he brought up a search ARO for the name.

"Guess he doesn't like the truth." Waldo said. Then he looked down and saw John looking back up. "Oh, didn't know there were kids here." John quickly found that Waldo's name was a stage name, that he hosted a self titled matrix program.

"My aunt's workin'." John said, trying now to be careful about how he said to the journalist.

"Can I ask you something?" Waldo asked, and before John could answer he received a file request on his commlink. It was a simple image file, so John accepted it.

"You see Mr. G. over there with the blond and red head?" Waldo asked, pointing over to a person who had a pretty lady at each side. John figured out the man he was talking about by the picture he received. The ladies Mr. G. was with were quite attractive.

"He keeps referring to them as his daughters." Waldo told him, "I don't know about you, but the kids in that recent photo look about ten years younger than those two."

John looked at the picture again, and saw a blond and red headed girl, but looked like they were about his age, give or take a year. "Yeah, I get you." John said.

"You like a reporter or something?" Mina asked.

"You could say that." Waldo told them.

"Want the scoop of the party?" John asked, a devious thought coming to mind.

"Yeah, sure." Waldo said.

"You catch that fight at the kitchen?" John asked.

"Certainly." Waldo said, holding up what looked like was a full trideo recording kit. "Mr. Carl Axiom's quite the ass kicker, isn't he?"

John waved Waldo to lean over. He then whispered into the elf's ear, "Well, you didn't hear it from us, but he paid to have that fight staged so he could leave early."

"I thought so." Waldo said as he stood, grinning like a Cheshire cat. With a wink he was off.

"Can we go now?" Mina asked.

"I guess." John said, feeling rather bored.

Thankfully a few minutes later they met up with Hunter again. "Excuse me, got the kids to watch." she said to another gentleman that took one look at John and Mina and paled. Without a word he melted into the crowd.

"Great timing." Hunter said as they left. Once it looked like no one was paying closer attention she said, "Val and Whisper got the stuff out."

"Why didn't they message us?" John asked as they walked out the front entrance of the Celsius Intellect Lodge.

"Val figured you two could've used a break from all you've done." Hunter told them, "And not just this job but over the last month."

"Okay." was all John felt like saying.

"So what do we do now?" Mina asked.

"Grab our stuff and go. Last train leaves at eight." Hunter told them.

They had no problems getting back to their rooms where they changed back to their street clothes, packed up the rest of their stuff, and headed back out again. John was ready to give Snowman his holdouts to sneak them back into Denver. Their backpacks were certainly heavier with their new clothes as they walked back to the train station.

"Glad you made it." Snowman said, meeting them just before they reached the security checkpoint.

"So'm I." John said, passing the white haired troll a plastic sack that held his holdouts and their holsters.

"I'll make sure this gets in with the rest of your stuff." Snowman told them just before he walked off.

"That's nice of him." John said as they headed to the security check.

Like last time, passing through security was not a problem. Soon they had caught up with the others and made the same six-way split to pay for a private car back to Denver.

"I can't believe everything worked out." Valkyrie said when Hunter had secured the door to their private car behind them.

John yawned as he took a seat next to Mina.

"I still do not know how he paid me too." Whisperwind said as she lounged in mid air above them all.

"I rigged it." John said.

"I think that's enough shop talk for now." Hunter said, sitting down next to John.

After a few minutes of waiting the train jerked into motion.

"I'm always glad to get underway." Hunter said as the train pulled out of the station.

John closed his eyes, pulling up a music matrix site for something to listen to while they rode back to Denver.

"Time to wake up." he heard Hunter say.

"What?" John asked. The music had stopped and he found himself leaning against Hunter. Pressing up against him was Mina.

"Oui, mon petite." Whisperwind said, hovering just in front of them. "We are here."

Mina groaned as she stirred and sat up.

John stretched as he also sat up. Checking the chronometer in his goggles, he saw that the trip had taken them a little over two hours.

They got off the train, collected their checked luggage, and met up with Snowman after passing through security back into the Hub of Denver. After divvying up the cargo amongst everyone to carry, they headed back to the parking garage where they had left their vehicles. Ross was not on duty when they got there, but the attendant let them in without any hassle.

John was quite relieved when he saw their vehicles, particularly his black Katana-11, were still there and unharmed.

"Told you'd they'd be fine." Hunter said.

Their packs were stashed in the back of Valkyrie's truck, and John collected his pistols before they left.

Despite the late hour and light traffic, the border crossings were a breeze, and a few hours later they were in the Arvada Barrens

The Arvada Barrens were a step above the Aurora Warrens when it came to just about everything. From a combination of the VITAS plagues and the fall of the Ute nation itself, this part of Denver had just fallen behind. Still it was considered safer here in some places than over in Aurora, as at least the PCC was still seriously considering the area valuable.

That did not mean it was as safe as around the Hub. Far from it. People still wore body armor and more openly carried weapons compared to the central most part of Denver, and no one walked at night if they did not have to. John felt safer knowing his Predators were just inside his leather jacket, loaded and ready just in case.

The Sacred Rat Lodge did not look much like anything from the outside, but according to Whisperwind it was the right place. The buildings were barely more than concrete skeletons, and off to their left was a stained sign that marked the building as a soup kitchen, and from behind its boarded up windows was a faint light.

Valkyrie knocked on the front door, and after a moment it opened just a little. John could not see around the fomori woman, but everything was apparently okay as she waved them over.

"Start grabbing stuff and bring it in." she told them as she headed back to her truck.

John and Mina walked back and grabbed several various packages and walked back.

Inside was warm despite the unseasonably chill outside, lit by various candles and even a few strings of Christmas lights. The room was filled with what John could only describe as junk. Bottles, clothes, cans, and other knick-knacks covered what were probably dining tables.

"Why don't you kids sit down. We'll take care of the rest." an Amerindian told them. John figured this was Mr. Backstreet. He looked like he was in his thirties and was dressed in several layers of jackets, some of which were patched with duct tape. He inspected the packages and then set them down again.

John and Mina found a few chairs and did sit. John noticed several rats come out of nowhere, grabbing the smaller packages as they were brought in.

"What's with the rats?" asked Mina.

"_Aren't you scared of 'em?_" John silently asked her.

"_I'll just burn 'em if they come after me._" Mine replied.

"They're little helpers, and my friends." Mr. Backstreet told them as he continued inspecting the packages as they were brought in. Many were quickly taken by rats as he placed them on a table.

"Here's the last of it." Hoss said as he walked in, carrying five of the metal cylinders over each shoulder.

"And that is everything. I thank you very much." Mr. Backstreet told them. He pulled out of his pocket six credsticks and handed one to each of them.

Tiredly John stood to collect his credstick. He slotted it and saw it had their payment of four thousand nuyen on it.

"I'll make sure Mr. Johnson knows the good job you've done." Mr. Backstreet said.

John simply waved his goodbye as they walked out the door.

"Can we go home now?" Mina asked.

"I'll ride with you back over to the UCAS." Hunter said as she mounted her Contrail.

"Okay." John said as he got onto his own motorcycle.

It was going to be nice to be home again.


	13. Run 13 : Take Out Service

Run 13 : Take Out Service (based on the mission written by Stephen McQuillan)

John sighed, stretching his arms high above his head. He had just finished installing a smartgun system onto the Ares Heavy MP Laser, but was still trying to think of how he was going to get it, the turret assembly, and the new drone he had gotten two days ago all together.

Mina had told him she was going to ask an earth spirit to help, but had ended up virtually locking herself in her room instead. One of the few times she came out he had asked her what she was doing all alone in there. All she said was, "Meditating."

Now if only he felt he could leave to get an air mattress. Still sleeping in a sleeping bag was fine compared to the luxurious bed at WinterLand, but the concrete floor was suddenly now very, very hard. Especially when Mina was locking herself in her room again.

At least it was not a complete loss. John was able to spend the hours he needed alone to compile and register a pair of stronger sprites than he had used before. These sprites were more difficult, and it took more time than before registering them, but after a few days worth of work he had them. He wondered if he might be able to use the same 'meditating' line on Mina when he would have to spend six hours straight doing nothing by trying to reregister a sprite.

Late that afternoon Mina came out of her room. She wore her Mercurial tee-shirt, and it looked like she had been wearing it for the last week. She grabbed a half liter juice bottle from their little refrigerator, then dropped herself down in one of the few chairs they had.

"What were you up to?" John asked.

"Meditating." Mina said, cracking the seal on the bottle.

"I know, but what for?"

"Getting better at magic."

John figured to just leave it at that. He really did not understand magic all that much, and figured Mina did not want to try and educate him on the subject.

"How's Hotspot doing?" Mina asked.

Hotspot was the name of John's new Doberman drone that Merlin had delivered.

"I need that spirit's help to get the turrets swapped and the laser mounted." John told her.

"Oh, sorry." Mina said. She closed her eyes and held her right hand to her face in something John guessed was an arcane gesture.

A two meter tall humanoid appeared in the empty part of the room. It looked like it was made of an iron like metal, somewhat shiny but unpolished. Most of its form was not fluid, and was almost like it was a collection of variously shaped building blocks for body parts. Its chest had a five pointed star within a circle engraved in it. While its arms and legs looked as thick as a troll's, its arms had a smaller half arm extending from just below its elbow with a matching smaller hand. Its face looked largely devoid of features, but had discernible mouth and eyes that glowed from within like molten iron.

"Hope it'll be careful." John said, looking up at the monstrous looking spirit.

"Me too." Mina said softly.

Mina guided the spirit like she was a pro. It effortlessly pulled out the already detached turret assembly from John's new Doberman drone, and was quite careful with it as it set the turret aside on the floor. It used its smaller armlets to juggle the new turret while carefully holding it with its bigger hands as it slid the new reinforced turret into the drone's body.

John had to admit the spirit was of great help, perfectly and inhumanly still as it held the heavy equipment while John secured it to the Doberman's frame. Once all the connections were made John tested it, and smiled as everything came back good.

The spirit also hefted the heavy Ares laser with ease, holding it just as steady as John connected it to the turret and the drone's electronics. John was just glad he did not need the spirit's help to put the laser's power pack in.

"Thank you." Mina said to the spirit.

"Uh, yeah, thanks." John added uneasily.

Without a sound the spirit vanished.

"They actually think?" John asked.

"Sometimes I summon the same spirits back." Mina told him. "I get good feelings from them when I thank them."

John kind of felt it was silly, thanking something like a spirit. However he would not dare discussing this with Mina or any other magician that felt like her.

It was a little after 20.30, just a few minutes after sunset, when John's commlink started beeping with an incoming call. The ID was blocked, and John figured it meant he would be working again this weekend. Without his goggles on, John disabled the video with a thought and answered the call.

"Oy, you don't know me," came an energetic woman's voice, "but a friend of a friend recommended I give you a call so we could do some business.

"So listen up, pryátel," she continued, "I've got a table at the Splatter Bar waiting. Both of you meet me in an hour if you want to earn a bit of pay. I'll be with the neo-fascists laying down some covering fire!" She laughed wickedly before disconnecting the call.

John shook his head, sighing.

"Splatter Bar?" Mina asked.

He had no real search program in his commlink, but John acted like he was fiddling with it while he mentally reached into the matrix to look up the place. Not only was it easy to find its address, but also that there was a fifty nuyen cover charge just to get in, and the place was thick with augmented reality. A common reference was between an AR matrix game called Miracle Shooter and a hot landing zone.

"Arapahoe Street, in the Sioux side of the Hub." John said aloud.

Mina groaned.

Quickly they got dressed and geared up, and were off as quickly as possible.

The border crossing on East Colfax was not a problem at all, with a simple stop and go for a check to enter the CAS sector. From there it was a straight shot all the way to the Hub.

Security was worse when they tried to get into the Sioux side of the Hub, and it took a bit of smooth talking for the two of them to get past the border checkpoint. Once they were through, John wondered if they might have had an easier time trying to loop around Union Station to get in.

They figured the heightened security was partially because it was a Friday night and the Hub housed not only a few corporate enclaves, but also numerous high class restaurants, theaters, and clubs. Being juveniles likely did not help much in trying to get in, especially when they still rode his Katana-11 racing motorcycle.

Finding the Splatter Bar was not too difficult. It was a three story tall, gray concrete block of a building with narrow windows. Despite the traffic congestion John was able to find a relatively safe looking parking space nearby.

"No kids allowed." the bouncer at the Splatter Bar door told them as they walked up.

"We're supposed to meet someone." John told him.

Another couple walked ahead of them, the bouncer accepting the door payment and handing each of them a toy plastic pistol.

"You need those to get drinks?" Mina asked.

"Yup." the bouncer told them.

John transferred one hundred nuyen, the door cover charge for two people, to an empty credstick in his goggles, then slid out the credstick and handed it to the bouncer. "How 'bout we pay, but you keep the toys?" John asked, "We didn't come to drink."

"I don't know what you're talking about." the bouncer said, taking the credstick and slotting it. With no one else at the door, the bouncer stood at parade rest, his hands loosely behind his back. Looking out at the street, he seemed to ignore John and Mina.

Then John noticed his credstick sticking out between two of the bouncer's fingers. "C'mon." he said, grabbing Mina with one hand and his credstick with the other, and in through the door they went.

The inside of the Splatter Bar was largely open, with multiple levels of catwalks and balconies, colored lights, and steaming pipes to give a faux urban jungle feel. There was also a lot of augmented reality icons about, especially when some patrons started shooting at others with the toy pistols they got at the door. Flying bullets looked like a mish mash of colored pellets flying all over the place. For a Thursday night the place was packed and hopping.

"_She said she'd be with the neo-fascists laying down covering fire._" John told Mina over their private connection as he looked about the patrons. The music of choice was synthcore, pumped very loud.

He felt Mina tap his shoulder. Looking to her he saw her pointing up at a spot on a second level catwalk. There a table and some chairs had been turned up to make a makeshift barricade against the outside patrons. Looking along the wall, John figured there was a booth behind the barricade, judging by the spacing of other booths he could see.

Just when he was about to look elsewhere, John saw a few men with a shaved heads pop up and fire toy guns at some of the other patrons. If it had not been for a swastika tattooed on the side of one guy's head, John would have thought it was the wrong booth.

They made their way over to a spiral staircase up to the right level and made their way over to the barricade. John stopped once when an AR predator that looked like some kind of cross between dragon and bird got in their way. They continued after it moved on out of their way.

There were still a few empty seats behind the makeshift barricade, and the loud music was nicely suppressed enough so people could talk without having to yell. Three skinheads and a blonde woman sat along one side of an upright table. Ignoring the other's commlinks, the woman's commlink gave the name Irina Klavikova. Her hair was cut shorter than Mina's, wearing a dangerously low cut shirt that showed off her cleavage and gold necklace with a pair of Greek characters on it, and tight jeans. From the sound of her voice as they approached, John figured she was Mrs. Johnson tonight.

Billy was already there, along with another dark haired man that looked just as imposing as Billy despite the lack of any cybernetics. He had short, curly black hair, and where Billy just looked big, he looked big and buff. His commlink gave the name Richard Knopp, but John figured right away it was fake. Just like his commlink's name of Calvin Klein was fake.

John felt Mina take his hand in hers and squeeze hard. He tried to give her a reassuring squeeze back.

"Ooo, but I didn't call for any kids." Irina said, leaning over the table rather suggestively towards John.

"You said a friend of a friend suggested us." John, taking a seat so Mina could sit as far away from Richard as possible.

"You sure I called you?" Irina asked.

"Pryátel. I'll be with the fascists laying down covering fire." John quoted from the call, trying to mimic the same maniacal laughter. Frowning behind his goggles, he added, "You never did say who this friend of a friend was."

"You should send the kids away." Billy said, "We don't need 'em."

"Hey Billy, ya fix that hole in your 'link's firewall yet?" John asked snidely, going straight for the commlink that was implanted in his arm instead of the obvious one at his wrist.

"For all I know you are some hacker who heard what he should not have." Irina said, leaning back.

"Trouble again, Cypher?" John heard Hunter ask as she took the last chair, putting another body between Mina and Richard. Mina still kept close to John.

"_What is it about that guy?_" John privately asked.

"Cypher?" Irina asked, "This boia is Cypher?"

"_I don't like how his aura is when he looks at me._" Mina answered, and John could sense some nervousness from her through their private connection. Still holding hands, he gave her another squeeze.

"You will vouch that these children are Cypher and Firefly?" Irina asked.

"He won't." John said, pointing at Billy. "And we never met the other guy."

"Might be a smart-aleck, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find a better hacker." Hunter said.

John caught Irina looking him over with a grin that made him a little nervous.

"Here is what I want you to do." Irina said, jumping straight to business, "I want you to eliminate another team and take a job from a triad fixer named Mikano Li. Record the meet, but bring me the goods.

John did not like the sounds of this. Crimes of various sorts were one thing, but this sounded like one of those unspoken shadowrunner rules of conduct things.

By the looks on Billy's face, the razorboy was all up for it. John could not get a good gauge on the other guy other than it looked like he was trying to figure out the job.

"I hope you've got a good reason for us to do this." Hunter said, "Killing runners is one thing when jobs cross and the shit hits the fan, but this is crossing a few lines."

Irina loosed a psychotic fit of laughter. "Ooo, she's doing something very naughty." she told them, "And, pryátel, if you do your job right she cannot do anything about it. Just make sure I've got the good before Li knows she is double crossed."

John figured Irina knew more about what was going on than she let on.

"_She's hiding something. I see it in her aura._" Mina silently said.

"_I figured that._" John replied.

"I will pay you fifteen hundred now, and twelve thousand, five hundred more when you deliver. You'll also get a stipend from Mikano for the job, too."

Billy grinned. Maybe it took payments this large for something he thought was simple to make him not whine about the nuyen?

The new guy seemed to have a satisfied look on what John had been seeing as a dullard face.

"You're not offering a lot for us to put our reps on the line for you like that." Hunter said. "I don't like that one bit."

"I don't like killing this other team." Mina added, speaking with a confidence John rarely heard her use.

"Me too." John added.

"You've killed people before." snipped Billy, "Why so fuckin' squeamish now?"

"'Cause this other team did nothin' to me!" John countered, "Geek or be geeked's one thing. This's different. I'm with Hunter, and I ain't gonna fuck another team like this."

Irina grinned big, and John did not feel reassured. "Alright then. Twenty thousand when you deliver, and you don't have to kill the other team. Scaring them off will work just fine."

"Sounds better to me." Hunter said, "I'll do it."

"Okay, me too." John added. Then he realized that Irina had not specifically said they had to kill the other team anyway. Knowing it was clearly not necessary was a welcomed comfort.

Mina nodded. It looked like she was more okay with this.

Billy chuckled. "I'd've been in already."

"I'm sure she knew that." John added.

"Uh, okay. I'll do it." the new guy said. His voice was deep, but lacked the edge that spoke of intelligence.

"Great!" Irina cried, clapping her hands together, "There's this air-taxi pilot, Sergei Germanov, who'll fly you to the meet site. He's legal to hop from the Hub to the Sioux sector up north." She fiddled with her commlink, and John accepted the fifteen hundred nuyen retainer.

"Why can't we drive there?" the new guy asked.

"You won't make it there in time." Irina told them.

"Two Sioux border crossings. Got it." Hunter said knowingly.

"Fine." Billy relented.

Irina grinned. "There's a parking garage just south west of here on Lawrence. Sergei's there."

"I know it." Hunter said.

"I'll give him a call! Call me when you're done!" Irina yelled after them as they left the little bunker.

More people had arrived and John and Mina were hard pressed to keep up with Hunter as she pushed her way for the exit.

"So where's this parking lot at?" John asked followed Hunter to the same parking lot he had left his motorcycle at.

"Just a block over," Hunter said, gesturing ahead of them, "and a few blocks down." she gestured off to their left.

"I got my car over here." Richard told them, "I could give y'all a ride."

"No." Mina said sternly.

"I think it'd be best we take all of 'em." Hunter said as she climbed onto her motorcycle. "There's no telling where we'll end up in all of this."

"Oh, okay." Richard said.

It was slow going down Lawrence street, and after covering one block John could see a multilevel parking garage that also doubled as a helicopter landing pad. The evidence was clear when a Mk. 3 Prometheus shuttle helicopter took off.

Getting into the parking garage was not too difficult, though it felt like a large and boring drive as they went around and around in circles. When they got to the top John saw that it was entirely dedicated to aircraft. Currently there was one lone aircraft parked.

Hunter rode right up to the only man that was leaning against a side door of what John identified as a Renraku Titan, a tilt rotor aircraft similar to the V-22 Osprey of the previous century, only a bit larger. He wore an Aces High flight jacket and had curly black hair and a matching beard that seemed to blend perfectly into one mop of hair. "You Sergei?" she asked.

"Da, I am Sergei." he said with a Russian accent. "I get call from Irina. I take you to meet." He hopped up, opened up the door. From a switch concealed inside he triggered a loading ramp at the rear of the Titan to open up. "Get in! Get in! Sergei got room for all!" he said.

"Car's first." Hunter said, waving Richard to drive in first.

Now was the first time John paid attention to what Richard was driving. It was an off blue GMC Commodore that looked like it was as old as he was. It also looked like he was letting the car drive itself into the belly of the Titan.

"I tie her down." Sergei said as he climbed in.

"Time to get our bikes in, too" Hunter added.

John followed her around on his motorcycle, with Mina still hanging onto him with an iron grip.

"Why you gotta do that? I put the parking brake on!" Richard cried.

"Is to keep car from moving!" Sergei told him. "I no fly if car no tied down!"

"Relax." Hunter said as she parked her motorcycle and got off it. "Parking brakes ain't perfect, and if that two ton car of yours shifts in flight it can bring us all down. I'll get the straps for the bikes!" When John noticed her commlink had gone into hidden mode, John switched his to hidden as well. Mina was quick to do the same.

"Da! Da!" Sergei replied.

After John and Mina had gotten off of his motorcycle, John accessed his motorcycle's controls. From inside there he told the smart tires to flatten themselves.

"Whoa!" Mina exclaimed as the tires flattened out on their bottoms.

"Neat." commented Hunter as she grabbed a few straps and tied his motorcycle down too.

"Good! Good!" Sergei went as he checked over Hunter's work. "Come! Come!" he added, waving them on.

"Where're we going now?" asked Billy.

"Passenger cabin." Hunter said.

The passenger cabin was just ahead of Richard's car, and apparently behind the cockpit. It was not much more than half a dozen seats on either side of the Titan's fuselage. Mina was quick to sit down on the other side from Richard. John was right at her side, and right away she took his hand in hers. Hunter sat at Firefly's other side, and thankfully Billy sat on the side with Richard. Following Hunters lead, John and Mina fastened their seatbelts.

"Maybe we ought to get some introductions out of the way." Hunter said. From outside John could barely hear the engines throttling up. "You can call me Hunter."

"Firefly." Mina said, though John would have sworn he heard her growl.

"Cypher." John said.

"My boyfriend." Mina added.

John felt a sudden rush of heat to his face.

"Little boy getting' some?" Billy asked.

"More than you!" John returned.

"Boys!" cried Hunter, "Enough! We're not gonna start this crap again."

"Billy started it!" John cried.

"Did not!" challenged Billy.

"Enough!" yelled Hunter, "I don't care who started it, I'm ending it."

John waited for Billy to try saying something, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Sorry 'bout that." Hunter said to Richard, who was looking a little uncomfortable. "Can't seem to go a few hours without these two going at it like this. So, what's your handle?"

"Uh, Ironbar." Richard said. He quickly fiddled with his commlink, and soon it too was in hidden mode.

"Ironbar, hmm." Hunter repeated, "I think I've heard of you before."

John wondered if Hunter was going to say more as the Titan took off straight up.

"Ah, now I know where I've seen you before." Hunter said, "Been here a while from L.A.?"

"Uh, yeah." Ironbar said nervously. "Just a few weeks."

"Yeah, I know you." Hunter said darkly.

"Hey, I want no trouble. I'm just here 'cuz of work." Ironbar told her.

"Make sure you keep it that way." Hunter said.

"_What's she talking about?_" Mina asked.

"_Not a clue._" John replied.

"What about recording the meet?" John asked.

"Don't you worry about that. I've got it covered." Hunter said.

They rode on in silence. Just when John was starting to wonder where they were going to, Sergei said, "Hang on. We make fast drop."

True to his word, John felt the Titan suddenly begin to drop. For what was probably not going to be the last time that night, Mina grabbed his hand and held it tightly.

Unlike their sudden drop, the landing was surprisingly smooth.

John and Mina were quickly out of their seats and off to his motorcycle. Getting the straps off was easy, and with a simple command the smart tires reverted back to their usual round shape. By the time the motorcycles were free, the loading ramp was already wide open. John was the first one out into the parking lot of a golf course. He quickly got out of the way so Ironbar could drive his car out of the Titan.

"Where are we?" Ironbar asked as he got out of his car.

The place did look familiar, and he remembered just as soon as Hunter spoke.

"Riverdale Golf Course." Hunter said, "Up in Henderson."

Actually it was the golf course near where John, Hunter, Billy, and Valkyrie had met with Kyra from another team called the Black Cats in the middle of March. He honestly hoped that the other team they had to deal with now was not them.

"We still in Denver?" Ironbar asked.

"Are we still in Denver?" Billy badly mimicked, pitching his voice to sound like a nasally nerd's.

"Uh…" Ironbar went.

Talking had to wait as Sergei's Titan throttled up for takeoff. The turboprops were incredibly loud on the outside as the engines spun up to speed before being able to lift the aircraft up off the ground. Once several meters up, the Titan started moving forward, and soon was far enough away where John could hear himself think once more.

"Cut him some slack." Hunter said as she looked about, "He's only been in the Zone for a couple of weeks."

"Pssst. Newbie." Billy went.

Ironbar looked a bit dejected.

"What's the plan?" John asked.

"If we're lucky, get some information about the other team. Maybe talk 'em out of it." Hunter said.

"Fuck that idea." Billy said, snapping his spurs out.

"Save 'em." Hunter barked, "Just because I said talk doesn't mean we're gonna just talk."

"Like intimidate? Scare the shit out of 'em?" John asked.

Ironbar's face went from bland to surprised. Had he never heard a twelve year old cuss before?

"We should just fuck 'em over. Simple." Billy said.

"Uh, no." Ironbar said.

"Good answer, Ironbar." Hunter said, "Billy, keep it in your pants. Now just shut it while I make some calls."

John decided to make a call of his own. With a thought he sent a call out to Tabby. He hoped she would not be upset with a call at the late hour.

Just when John was thinking she was not going to answer, someone picked up. "Hello?"

"Hey Tabby." John said, using what would be his normal voice.

"Hey kiddo. Kinda late, isn't it?"

"On a job for some whacked out nut job named Irina." John told her.

"Oh yeah, I know about her." Tabby said with a tone in her voice that made John feel a little nervous, "Her daddy's Alexei Klavikov, for starters."

"Who?"

"Oh, right, you might not know. Alexei Klavikov's the head of the Vory in the Sioux sector. They do scare tactics and mind games, that sort of stuff.

"Anyway, best be careful about Irina. Best way to describe her is a functioning psychotic. She's got all sorts of sex and violence issues, minimal impulse control, and the skills with a handgun to back up her threats."

"Why are the cute ones almost always the nut jobs." John commented, looking up at the sky. Off towards the east he could see the full moon still rising into the sky.

"Just be careful 'round her, okay?" Tabby asked.

"Okay."

"Sorry, bet you didn't call about Irina. What's up?"

"Gonna have to deal with another team this job."

"Considering Irina, I'm not surprised." commented Tabby.

"Just wanting to know a bit of what we'll have to deal with."

"Kinda depends on where you're at." Tabby said, "Not like you guys are gonna be the only team out on any night."

"We're up in Henderson."

Tabby whistled. "If it's not the Black Cats, then it's gotta be some newbies I've heard about. They've tended to work just that sector so far. All metas and a pretty rounded team, or so I hear. Street sam, hard core spell slinger, gunfighter, net crasher, and face. They've been doing pretty good so far."

"Wow, thanks." John said.

"Be careful." Tabby said before ending the call.

Looking around, John saw that Hunter looked like she was still silently talking to her contacts. Apparently being bored with nothing to do, Ironbar and Billy sat in the car and were listening to what John would describe as the God awful worst rap music ever made. Figuring Ironbar was not too high up in the brain power, and knowing Billy certainly was not there, John guessed the music catered to the really dumb folks without taste.

The golf course beyond did not look too much better than the last time. It was, however, substantially warmer than last time.

"Firefly, do some astral recon." Hunter finally said. "We'll make sure you're okay."

"How do I do that?" Mina asked.

"Just project and head out a ways. Look for anything magical, but don't try to get spotted by the same." Hunter told her.

"Okay." Mina said softly. First she changed from sitting behind John on his motorcycle to in front of him. Her whole body went limp just as he put his arms around her.

"So what'd you find out?" John asked.

"Round about team." Hunter said, "There's a hacker in the mix, so you'll definitely be up."

"And a magician, too." John added. When Hunter looked at him, he said, "Hey, I got bored and made a call, too. Also learned a bit about Irina."

"Undersexed, functioning psychotic?" Hunter asked, "I'm familiar with her."

"And daughter of Alexei Klavikov." John added.

"Thought so."

After a while Mina groaned and shifted in his arms. She blinked a few times before looking up at John, and she smiled.

"Find anything?" Hunter asked.

"It doesn't look too pretty here. Not like WinterLand." Mina said. "But there's nothing out there."

"We've got a magician to deal with, so you might wanna conjure up a strong spirit to help out now." Hunter said. "I don't think there's any type special."

Mina closed her eyes and made the same gesture with her hand that she did earlier that day. Unlike last time, no spirit appeared.

"Where is it?" John asked.

"Waiting to be called on." Mina said.

"But you've summoned one?" Hunter asked.

"Yes." Mina softly said. She made no effort to move from what must have been a relaxing spot leaning against John.

"It might be a long wait." Hunter said, "I don't care how bored you get, best not to be out at any matrix sites. They're fine since his music's local."

A quick scan told him Hunter was right. Despite the music playing there were no signals going to an outside server.

"_Wish I had some saved music._" Mina silently said.

"_Me too._" agreed John.

It was close to 23.30 when John felt something. It was a curious sensation being scanned by another source when there was little WiFi activity otherwise.

"Someone's coming." Hunter said. John figured she noticed the scan too. She was off her motorcycle and pounded the hood of Ironbar's car.

Ironbar was easily roused from his car, but it took a bit more prodding to get Billy into action. Grumbling, he peeled himself from the front passenger seat of Ironbar's car.

An orange and yellow Bulldog Step-Van pulled up, taking a parking space a good distance away from John and the others. Mina stood as the other team got out of their van.

Tabby had been right about the team being metas. Two orks, two elves, a dwarf, and a human, and three of them were packing some serious firepower.

"What's going on here?" the dwarf asked. He was clean shaven, had short cut red hair, and was actually wearing what looked like common street clothes and a jacket.

"We've got a small change of plans, that's what's going on here." Hunter said.

Almost right away John felt a spike of signals coming from one of the orks. Considering one had a fair amount of obvious cyber, and the other nothing at all, John focused his attention to the cybered ork. He had brown hair shaved to a long Mohawk and was also wearing common street clothes.

"You can't seriously be saying what I think you're saying." the dwarf said.

"I'm quite serious." Hunter returned, "You guys gotta go. We're taking your place, and we can't tell you why."

John found the ork's commlink and was already applying a virtual to the firewall.

"What if we don't want to leave?" one of the elves, the female, asked. Her English was slightly accented. She had long black hair pulled into a simple pony tail, wearing an armored jacket.

"Then things'll get messy." growled Billy.

"Down, boy." barked Hunter.

John broke through the firewall of the ork's commlink. The node's interior looked like it had been modeled off the trideo flop Tron: Reborn, and without a running agent it looked like he had the run of the place.

"Oh, don't tell him that." the dwarf said, reaching into his jacket.

John grabbed Mina and pulled her behind his motorcycle.

"It's gonna get messy!" John heard the dwarf yell.

By the gunshots John heard, the dwarf was not the only one to have pulled a gun. When their hacker tried to launch his exploit program, John immediately crashed it. When he brought it up again John instead disabled the direct neural inputs to the commlink.

"Mother fucker!" he heard a new voice cuss.

"Hey! There's kids here, dumbass!" John yelled back.

Amongst some more gunfire John felt his motorcycle take two hits.

"Mother fucker!" John yelled. He drew his Super Warhawk to peek over his motorcycle. Seeing the male ork hiding just behind the van, a pistol in hand and aiming at him, John aimed and squeezed off a shot back. He could not tell how good the shot was, but he saw the ork disappear behind the van.

Then John's world lit up like he was the D.C. Christmas tree. He fell against his motorcycle, his head hitting the ground hard and bringing more stars to his eyes than he saw in the night sky above.

"Astorath!" he heard Mina yell, and there was a sudden explosion of heat to his side.

Still on his back, before John could turn to look, that heat source jumped over him and his motorcycle. It was a humanoid of bright red and orange flame.

"Geoff!" John heard the dwarf yell. "The spirit!"

It was a painful experience as John righted himself to peek over his motorcycle. The fire spirit almost looked like it was pissed off as it advanced on one of the elves and the other ork. The elf, holding what looked like an assault rifle, unloaded a spray of bullets into the fire spirit, and it looked like it completely ignored her effort.

"Fuck you!" Mina yelled, standing up just a bit so she could extend her arm over John's motorcycle. From her open hand came a gout of red fire that went straight for the other elf. Maybe it was a good thing the elf was already bald when her flames washed over him. He cried out, dropping and rolling about to try and put himself out. John saw the dwarf grab him, pulling him quickly around behind the orange van.

"Hold it! Hold it!" John heard Hunter yell.

The fire spirit stopped its advance, but its flames still crackled like a roaring fire. The three still held their weapons ready, looking like they were still trying to figure out how to deal with a fire spirit nearly the size of a troll.

"Alright, you win!" John heard the dwarf yell from behind the van. "Just give us a minute, okay?"

"You got it." Hunter called back.

"The fuck? We just gonna let 'em leave?" whined Billy.

"Firefly," Hunter said with a dead seriousness that sent a shiver down John's spine, "set that spirit on Billy if he whines again or tries to attack the other team."

"Oh shit." John said softly.

The fire spirit turned to face Billy. It looked as demonic as the last time he had seen Mina summon it, its only features being a pair of angular eyes that burned white hot.

The ork hacker appeared from behind the van, holding his right shoulder as blood soaked his clothes and dripped down his arm. He was already looking a little pale from shock, and went a shade lighter when he saw John hold up his Warhawk revolver. John thought the ork might pass out if he knew the revolver was loaded with explosive bullets as he holstered the weapon.

When it looked like the other team was going to honor the truce, John cut his connection to the ork's commlink and stepped around to the other side of his motorcycle. "Shit." he cussed when he saw the two bullet holes, one in the lower fairing and the other in the muffler.

"How bad is it?" he heard Hunter asked from just behind him. It sounded like she was concerned.

"I dunno." John said, looking about as best as he could. "I don't think I can tell here. Maybe took a hit to the engine."

"Poor baby broke his bike?" Billy asked childishly.

"Shut up." John heard Ironbar growl.

The other team's van was certainly still functional as its engine rumbled to life. Looking up, John watched as the one human on the team, a blond haired woman, slowly backed out of the parking space and carefully drove off. It looked like she had a black eye.

"Pansies!" Billy called out. He was immediately thumped on the back of the head by Ironbar.

"We were too much for 'em to handle." Hunter told him. "Their magician sends Cypher for a loop, and looked like he took a hit for his effort. Firefly nearly burns him to death and looks right as rain. I don't think they had anything to deal with her elemental besides him."

"Whatever." Billy muttered.

John looked up when the area suddenly got darker. Looking around he noticed that the fire spirit was now gone.

"Let me take a look." Hunter said, kneeling next to John to look at his motorcycle. A pair of lights lit up on his motorcycle, coming from inside her eyes like tiny spotlights. "Yeah, too hard to tell now." she said as she stood, "Just hope that it starts up."

"How long till the Johnson gets here?" Ironbar asked.

"I think she's here now." Hunter said.

John stood to see where she was pointed.

"Now you guys keep quiet and let me do the talking." Hunter told them, "And Billy, for fuck's sake don't even open your mouth when she tells us how much she's gonna pay us."

John also received a text from Hunter, which read, "Hack her link, get her ID and info. Don't do anything else."

A black limo was pulling up from a different direction from where the van went. It pulled into the parking lot far from where the other team's van had parked not too long ago. Three men in dark suits climbed out before a woman did, and four more followed after her. The woman wore a dark skirt-suit that matched the color of what John took were her bodyguards.

"_She paranoid much?_" John asked to Mina.

Mina just looked at him and shrugged.

Like everyone else there, the woman and her bodyguards had their commlinks hidden. Right away John started feeling for a commlink.

"I was told there was going to be six of you." the woman said as she looked them over. John wholly expected her to ask about two kids being here for whatever the job was.

Though his head was hurting, John managed to identify her commlink. Right away he started forcing his virtual hand against its firewall.

"Problems at the border." Hunter said, "Got word he didn't stash his Panther cannon too well."

"Fine then. You can call me Ms. Johnson. Your job is to extract a woman and kill her bodyguard. No harm is to come to this woman. The job must be completed within twenty-four hours. I will pay you one thousand now and an additional thirty-five hundred more when you deliver."

Looking at Billy, John thought he was going to turn green and vomit right then and there. It also looked like he was almost through the firewall of Ms. Johnson's commlink.

"Why not make it an even four thousand." Hunter said, "Still paying less for the five of us than if the sixth was here."

Ms. Johnson seemed to think about it a moment before saying, "Deal."

"Alright, we're in."

Just after that John was through her firewall, and it looked like he was in trouble. Wishing he had called up a sprite to help him out, John now scrambled to try and stifle an alert before it went off.

Along with a transfer of one thousand nuyen came an image file. With a thought John whipped it up to an ARO to look at. Right away he recognized the temple at Happy Canyon Shopping Mall as where the image had been taken during a ceremony of some kind. There were several people in the image, and John recognized An Peng. Despite the others in the image, it was kind of hard to miss the troll with the single gleaming horn sticking out of the right side of his head, even if he and a Chinese woman had not been individually marked.

"The indicated woman is Chun Xaing." Ms. Johnson said, "A smuggler and a thief. She is also your target."

John loosed a held breath he had not realized he had been holding. He had been successful in convincing the firewall that there was no breach in its security.

"And the bodyguard?" Hunter asked.

"The troll." Ms. Johnson told them. "He is awakened. Possibly a physical adept."

Her ID was Mikano Li, a Saedder-Krupp junior executive. Something looked a little odd about the file details, so John decided to take a closer look.

"Anything else?" Hunter asked.

"No. Contact me when the job is done, and I will tell you where we meet." Mikano said, turning and getting back into the limo. Her bodyguards were in right behind her. John had what he needed and cut his connection just as the limo began to drive off.

"Well, that was brief." Hunter said.

"Fuckin' cheapskate." cussed Billy.

"Why'd you ask for more money? Aren't we gonna do this for Irina?"

"I thought her offer was too cheap, and not trying to negotiate might've made her suspicious." Hunter told them.

"Besides, she's not Mikano Li." John told them. "Her ID's fake. Too neat and new."

"Yeah, I know." Hunter said, "She's really Lin Yao."

"She is?" John asked.

"Bullshit." Billy challenged.

"Cypher, did you hack his eye when we were at Klub Karma?" Hunter asked.

"Oh! Her!" John said, now remembering who Lin Yao was. "Uh, no, I'm pretty sure I wasn't hacking his eye then."

"Two to one, you lose." Mina said with a grin.

"Doesn't matter." Hunter said quickly before Billy could try to whine about something. "I got the meet recorded, so now we just gotta see about tracking down Chun Xiang."

"Yeah, you do that." John said, "I'm gonna try starting my cycle."

John carefully checked under the Katana-11 for any leaking fluids, and was glad to find none. He logged into its node and ran a system check, and after a second got reports saying that fluid levels looked good, battery was charged, his breaks were down to thirty percent, and the built in radar system common to pretty much all vehicles was completely unresponsive. Mentally crossing his fingers he hit the starter.

The Katana-11 rumbled to life, but sounded a little uneasy as it idled. John revved the engine a few times, and though it did not sound any better at least it did not stall out on him. With the hole in the muffler it was also a lot louder than before.

"Sounds like shit." commented Billy.

"Better than yours." John bit back, letting his motorcycle idle. He carefully maneuvered around the punctured muffler to check the rear smart tire.

"How does yours sound?" Ironbar asked Billy.

John saw that the muffler looked like the bullet had gone all the way through it, augmenting the engine's sour sound, but the smart tire looked intact. Then he noticed a flattened slug on the ground near the tire.

"Pitiful." Mina said for Billy, "He doesn't have one."

"Oh." said Ironbar dully. John wondered if Ironbar got the insult or not. With a thought the motorcycle switched off.

It looked like Hunter was in another silent call with someone, so e went to his list of contacts and tried to think who might have heard or know the most about An Peng. It had been a while since he had even last seen the troll. He figured he would try giving the one talismonger he knew a call.

Just when John thought that maybe he was too late in calling he got an answer. "Mystic Curiosities." Zhang Wong said somewhat sleepily.

"Hey, sorry for the late night call, but I was hoping you could help me out some." John said.

"Who this?" Zhang asked.

"Sorry, we only met once. Month ago?" John asked, "Takeshi?"

"No, no Takeshi here." Zhang said.

"I know that. I mean we know him."

"What about Takeshi?" Zhang asked.

"Nothing." John told him, growing frustrated, "We met when me and others came looking for Takeshi a month ago. I was with a dumb bald guy and two hot babes?"

"Angry boy with big gun?" Zhang asked.

John had to think about it a bit. Then he remembered that he had gotten loud and mouthed off at Billy while they were there. "Yeah, I guess." he said.

"I remember. What you want?" Zhang asked sharply.

"Just some info about a spell slinger troll, An Peng."

"Big troll. One horn. Yes, I know." Zhang said.

"Anything else about him?" John asked.

"Memory foggy." Zhang told him.

John nodded to himself, sighing. He pulled three hundred nuyen and set a transfer to Zhang. He accepted it almost right away.

"Memory better." Zhang said, "He Hung Kwan for Golden Triangle triad. It mean no fuck with him."

"Not my type." commented John.

"He got new girl month ago. Same clan. He also very paranoid. Been attacked many times last month."

"Heard he got an ass whooping at Klub Karma." John added.

"That all I know." Zhang told him. "You no fuck. He good magician. He be ready."

"Thanks. Might bring a girl by if you got good stuff for her. She's a good magician too." John told her.

Zhang said nothing as the call ended.

"We ready?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." grumbled Billy.

"Maybe." John said.

"What's up?" Hunter asked him.

"Uh, how do you sneak up on a paranoid magician?" John asked.

"Uh, you don't?" Ironbar offered.

"Firefly?" Hunter asked.

Mina looked down at the ground, deep in thought. "There's spells he could have to protect or warn him about stuff." she said.

"Pfft. What about when he's sleeping?" Billy asked. "Even I know you can't have spells on ya when you're sleepin'."

Hunter groaned. John sympathized with her.

"Guess you've never got a healing spell while passed out?" Mina asked.

"I was just…" Billy started to say.

"Magicians got other things, like foci." Mina butted in, "They'll hold a spell while you sleep. And there's spirits. They don't sleep."

Billy wisely kept his mouth shut.

"Sprits are costly, especially for anything more than a day or a night." Hunter said. "Can you counter spells?"

"Maybe. I don't think I'd know we're in it, though." Mina told them, looking down at the ground.

"Just how big could they be?" John asked

Mina thought again. "I could do one… maybe over three hundred meters. Over seven hundred if I push it."

"And if An's stronger than you, best bet he can make it even larger." Hunter reasoned.

"What about spirits?" Billy asked.

Mina shook her head. "Eyeballs are too stupid. They'd ignore us unless I did my magic. Others might not work right. If they don't like you, they'll intentionally screw up."

"But he could have spiritual backup." Hunter told them.

"Spirits I can handle." Mina declared.

"Goes without saying you'll be dealing with An, then." Hunter said.

"I… I don't wanna kill him." Mina told them.

"Wuss." Billy said.

"Shut it." Hunter snapped at Billy. "You don't have to," she told Mina, "just stun him or something."

"Uh, didn't Ms. Johnson ask us to kill the bodyguard?" Ironbar asked.

"But we're delivering Chun to Irina." Hunter said, "She doesn't care if we kill An or not, so we're not killing him if we don't have to."

Mina smiled, apparently glad of this.

"Why so squeamish now?" Billy asked.

"Just drop it." Hunter said, "Guess we'll just have to hope whatever magic he's got doesn't give him too much info."

"So, uh, what're we gonna do?" Ironbar asked.

Hunter brought up a public ARO for everyone to see. John touched it to make a private copy for himself to better look at it.

"My source says this is An's itinerary for the next day." Hunter said, "And he's apparently entertaining some major bigwigs."

"So they're at his place till nine?" John asked.

"Then they're going to the Temple Of Inner Light. Not a good place to hit 'em." Hunter told them.

"Why not?" asked Billy.

"We don't look Chinese." John said.

"He's right." Hunter added, "Magicians on their home turf, like that blood mage we met underground. Considering where they're going the best places are gonna be to try and hit them en route somewhere, at An's home, or at Seto's."

Billy scowled. "And why not the Jade Emperor?"

"Got someone in the triad that'll be able to vouch for us?" Hunter asked. "I'd honestly be surprised you'd know anyone who'd vouch for you there."

John sighed, blinking several times as he tried to keep his eyes open.

"Just how smart are these guys gonna be?" Billy asked.

"Think bigwigs." John said.

"Think like they've got the Emperor of China with them." Hunter added. "Best to try and think like they might in what to do for security."

"I know what I'd do with the cars." John said, looking off at nothing in particular, "Fast, maneuverable, and rigged. Cut the WiFi and use a direct connection."

"Kinda what I was thinking." Hunter said.

"Why not bust in the temple?" Billy asked.

"Uh, lots of magic?" Ironbar asked back.

"We're only going to get two real shots at this, anyway." Hunter told them, "And even the second's going to be harder because they'll be expecting it."

"What about Seto's?" Ironbar asked.

"Maybe, but we gotta be careful. That place is neutral ground. Any violence as we'll have the place on us." Hunter told them.

John yawned.

"Maybe we should call it a night." Hunter said, "We can pick this up in the morning."

"'Cause of a couple a wussy kids?" Billy asked.

Mina groaned.

"The kids need sleep." Hunter said, "And in case you forgot she nearly burned a magician alive with magic tonight."

"Yeah. She'd probably kill ya." Ironbar added. At least he didn't seem too dumb.

"Fine." Billy said.

John's motorcycle still sounded rough as they headed out. It at least ran just fine to carry him and Mina to a coffin motel close to the CAS and UCAS sector borders, though it was quite late when they got there. At least there was no one to ask any questions as he and Mina climbed into a coffin together.

Hunter woke them late in the morning where they were off for breakfast at a nearby Nukit Burgers near the Colorado Boulevard and I-70 interchange. Both Ironbar and Billy were nowhere to be seen, and when John mentioned this Hunter only told them that the men were off to do some stuff that even they should not be able to fuck up too badly.

"Wanted to talk about the plan." Hunter said discretely as she sat down at a corner table with her breakfast. It looked like if they spoke softly no one would hear, and hopefully not care what was said.

"Cypher," Hunter continued, "you're gonna hack the restaurant tonight and work your magic on all of their security while Firefly and I sneak in to grab Chun."

"How're we gonna do that?" Mina asked as she unwrapped her breakfast sandwich.

"Same way you two have snuck around." Hunter said. "Except that I'm with you instead of Cypher."

"Okay." Mina said, blushing a little.

John was just about to ask why he could not be going in instead, but then remembered he was supposed to be busy with the matrix end of all of the security. She might have expected him to do it all from VR.

"Just make sure whatever spirit you conjure up can do a couple of tasks at least." Hunter told Mina, "I'm sure you're gonna need at least another to have it help hide Chun once we've got her."

"Yeah." Mina said just after swallowing a bite of breakfast. "But how much time will we have? It'll leave at sunset."

"Their itinerary says they're gonna be there till nineteen-thirty. Sunset's almost an hour after that."

"Oh." Mina said, looking a little relieved.

"Anyway, don't worry about that now." Hunter told them. "Got a garage we can go to to get your bike fixed. I'll tell you the details later."

After breakfast they went south and crossed the border into the CAS sector. From there they went to the mechanic's garage Hunter had mentioned, and got a spot where John could work on his Katana-11. It took the better part of the day, but in the end he managed to get it fixed and running like it had been before. Mina had even been able to help out a little by working a spell on the fairing to fix the bullet hole in it.

With his Katana-11 running smoothly once more, Hunter lead them down to City Park. There they met up with Ironbar and Billy.

"Just what the fuck was that all about?" Billy asked, "Driving around and around that house? For what?"

"Did anything change while you guys did that?" Hunter asked, largely ignoring Billy's questions.

"Uh, he had guards." Ironbar said. "He added more. A bunch more."

"Nothing else?" Hunter asked.

Ironbar shook his head.

"Looks like Firefly's right. He's got a spell or something to warn him." Hunter said.

"How do you know?" Billy asked.

"Firefly?" Hunter said.

"There's spells to warn magicians about people looking to attack them." Mina said, "You wanna kick his ass, so if he's got that spell on you're setting it off."

"And because he was expecting a fight, he doubled his guard." Hunter added. "Maybe if we keep our distance and do nothing it'll just fuel his paranoia. Then we snatch the target from under his nose and split."

"So we're not gonna take him out?" Ironbar asked.

"We're not gonna try to." Hunter told them. "Here's the game plan.

"We're going to wait until they're at Seto's this evening for dinner. Firefly and I will go in through the back door, invisible, and wait for Chun in the lady's room."

"You sure she's gonna go?" Billy snidely asked.

"Pretty sure." Hunter said, "Especially if she's had enough to drink. Anyway, we'll catch her in the bathroom and just walk out the backdoor. Cypher'll cover us from inside their node, editing video feeds and all that jazz."

"And us?" Ironbar asked.

"You two are backup." Hunter told them, "In case something happens, or An's got other tricks up his sleeve. You wait till we're all out of Seto's and then you strike."

"Why the fuck for?" Billy asked.

"Seto's is neutral ground. Triads, yakuza, and runners." Hunter said, "You start shit in there and you'll have everybody down to the busboy out to kick your ass. I don't give a shit how badass you think you are, you can't take that many people on."

Billy scowled.

"Now we should get going." Hunter said, "They'll likely be there by the time we get there."

"I still don't see why we couldn't've just raided his home." muttered Billy.

"Firefly, like we talked about." Hunter said.

"Okay." Mina said, and promptly vanished.

"Where'd she go?" Ironbar asked.

Billy suddenly doubled over. He was quick to lash out with a fist, but all it looked like he hit was air.

Almost as quick Mina reappeared a few steps back from where she had disappeared.

Pissed off as he was looking, John was surprised he did not try going after Mina now that she was visible. Hopefully he remembered what she did to the other magician the night before.

"Get it?" Hunter asked, "If a little girl can vanish and slug you in the gut without you being able to do anything about it, what about a magician that's not kind?"

Billy growled. At least it looked like Ironbar understood.

"Like I said," Hunter continued, "Firefly and I will go in, invisible, and with a spirit for backup. Cypher will cover us through the matrix. You two are backup to deal with anyone who might be chasing us, but Ironbar's in his car for the getaway with the target. Any questions?"

There were none, and John was glad Billy kept his mouth shut.

"Alright then, let's go." Hunter said.

About an hour later they were parked in a lot across the street from Seto's. After checking out the club's node again and finding nothing different, John pulled the resonance around himself to make himself virtually invisible, then applied a virtual hand to its firewall right away. In seconds he was through. A little bit later he had the node's analyze software neutralized so it would not detect him this trip.

"How're things?" Hunter asked.

"I'm stuck in good." John said as he pulled up AROs of all of the security camera feeds. He bunched several of the AROs together into a master ARO, copied it, and set one to track An Peng and the other to track Chun Xaing. With those two aside he organized the others so he could cover the restrooms and paths to the back door.

Once he had those ready, he pulled Chun's and the extra AROs into two feeds, with virtual hands stuck to the AROs that were actually being recorded so he could edit their information as it was recorded.

"Cameras set." he told them.

"And the locks?" Hunter asked.

It took John a bit to pull up only the important locks that they figured were needed. "Got 'em." he said once he had control of them.

"Isn't there anyone checking 'round?" Ironbar asked.

"No, actually." John said.

"Remember, discrete." Hunter told him, "Leave as few clues as possible behind."

Looking around, John could not see where Mina or Hunter were. A little bit later he saw them in his ARO of the back door security camera, but not in the ARO of the recorded footage. He smiled, tripping the door's lock just as Hunter reached for it.

They made their way to the lady's restroom, and there John lost them.

"This is so fuckin' boring." whined Billy after nearly an hour of waiting.

"These take time." Ironbar said. As unintelligent as he sounded, John had to admit he had a better grasp of these things than Billy.

It was not long after 19.00 when Chun stood and left the table. John watched as she headed towards the restrooms. He sent Hunter a text with the message. Once Chun was out of view John edited the video feeds to exclude her from further recording.

A few minutes later, on one of the AROs John had open to see what the camera's really saw, John saw Hunter and Mina carrying Chun out. He held his breath a few times when it looked like they were about to bump into people, and one time they did. The person apparently did not see them at all, and looking about apparently saw nothing. Unimpeded they continued for the club's back door.

Once they were out, John stopped his editing and closed out many of the extra AROs. An Peng and the others were still at their table and it looked like everything was all normal to them.

John went to work double checking the recorded video files, doing little touchups on them to make them look cleaner. When that was done he went to the access logs to clean up what evidence he could find of his mucking about, and ended it with a small delayed piece of code that would burn his log off and itself.

"You looked busy." he heard Hunter say, "How's everything?"

"Looking like nothing's wrong. She walks in and never walked out." John told them.

"Well, if you're done fucking about, get ready to move out." Hunter told him.

John was about to ask about Chun and already saw her sitting in the backseat of Ironbar's sedan. Mina climbed onto his motorcycle behind him just as he started the engine.

Hunter lead and John rode at her side as they made their way north along University Boulevard. John wondered where they were going, but when Hunter made a left turn, and a few blocks later a right turn into Cheesman Park, he figured he had his answer.

John saw a pair of headlights flash as they slowly drove through the park. From there they slowly pulled up to a windowless black delivery van.

Irina stood outside of the van, beaming big as they pulled up. From behind the van came several of her skinhead lackeys.

"You've got the package?" Irina asked excitedly as they walked up.

"Back of the car." Billy grumbled. John figured that the razorboy was still upset about not having had a chance to fight.

Ironbar held the door open as one of the skinheads was actually more careful with Chun than John expected.

"Good! Good!" Irina cried as she started fiddling with her commlink. John's commlink beeped as the funds were transferred, and he shifted them to the credstick he had discretely plugged into his goggles.

Looking back at the neo-fascists, John felt a chilled shiver run down his spine as Irina looked him over. Her gaze did not linger too long on him as she gave a similar look at Ironbar and Billy as well.

"Mother nature must've maxed her credit on you two." Irina said slyly as John turned to walk back to his motorcycle. Just as his back was to her, he felt a hand grab his buttocks. Seeing Mina ahead of him, he quickly spun around to see Irina with an even bigger grin after having grabbed him.

"Don't look so shocked." she cooed, kneeling next to John. He could feel the blood rushing to his face and elsewhere as her fingers lightly touched his cheek, her lips brushing sweetly and dangerously close to his lips. "You're a big boy." she whispered, and a shock ran up his spine as she grabbed his crotch.

Then she was up, practically bouncing as she headed for the delivery truck, laughing like crazy. The shock of her sudden change was enough to bring John back to his senses. Flustered, he turned back towards to his motorcycle and hurriedly walked away from the psychotic woman.

"Oh, by the way," he heard Irina say, "I heard about Fomin…"

John was turning around to look at Irina, maybe so he could get an explanation about who this Fomin person was. What he saw was Irina and the other skinheads pulling guns.

"Shit!" John cussed, reaching for his own Predators, the pistols chambering lethal rounds as soon as his hands touched their grips. Catching one of the skinheads aiming his way he quickly squeezed off a round. He could not tell if he hit the skinhead or not, but the guy did duck for cover.

Pain blossomed across his chest. Before he knew what hit him John found himself looking at the sky above.

Gunfire roared about him, and John thought he could hear other sounds at all.

"Move! Move! Move!" John thought he heard Irina yell amidst all the noise. Focusing his vision through one of his Predators, he could see her running for her van. He tried to aim at her, and when he thought he had the shot he took it.

Squealing tires briefly drowned out the sound of some gunfire, and John watched as Irina and her goons raced off in their van.

"Fuckin' cowards!" he heard Billy yell.

"Ironbar, check on Cypher!" he heard Hunter yell.

"I'm alive!" John yelled, coughing. He regretted yelling now as it sent new waves of pain through his chest.

"You don't look too good." Ironbar said, appearing over John. With his help John was able to stand.

"Feel like shit." John groaned. "Ow!" he cried out when Ironbar touched his chest. He then realized that it did not feel right. When he looked down he saw why, with at least a dozen tiny needles sticking out of his chest.

"Fuck this, I'm outa here." he heard Billy say.

"Hang on." Ironbar said, and John watched him rush off to his car. John was on his knees, tired and hurting, by the time Ironbar came back with a medkit in his hands. "Here." Ironbar said, handing John what looked like a pair of pliers. Ironbar held another himself.

Grunting through gritted teeth they worked at pulling the needles out. John figured his body suit protected him by keeping these needles from flying through him like he was paper.

"Thanks." John groaned when they were done, handing Ironbar back his pliers.

"If you guys are done, you should get the hell out of here." Hunter told them.

John turned to Hunter to ask her why, and felt his heart drop.

Hunter was kneeling over Mina, having already pulled a mess of needles out of the girl's back and was now tending to her wounds. Mina was lying face down, the back of her clothing and body suit torn open to expose most of her bloodstained back.

"What the fuck happened?" John cried, scrambling to Mina's side.

"She got shot, just like you." Hunter said as she continued her work. "If you're up to it you gotta get out of here."

"The fuck I will!" John yelled.

Hunter stopped what she was doing and looked at John straight in the eye. "I called a friend to help, and it should be here soon. She also told me she got a call to get here by the Star. I can protect her, but not the both of you." she told him.

"I uh, I'm gonna go." Ironbar stammered.

"We'll be alright." Hunter told him, returning to her work on Mina's back.

Out of nowhere what only John could figure was a spirit appeared. It looked like a Shinto priestess, its red and white robes fluttering in an intangible breeze.

Hunter looked up at it, and looked completely unsurprised by its sudden appearance. "This girl's your task." Hunter told it, "Make sure she doesn't die."

The sprit nodded and placed a hand on Mina's back.

John watched as Hunter pulled Mina's commlink off and shoved it against his chest. "Go!" she yelled, "She'll be alright! Go!"

Not knowing what else to do, John scrambled to his feet and ran for his motorcycle, its engine starting before he reached it. He more rode it than drove it, giving it an address of where to drive to as he hung on as he left Cheesman Park behind him.

A fresh pain spiked into his chest as he clutched Mina's commlink in one hand, riding off into the darkness.


	14. Run 14 : Wetwork Pure And Simple

Run 14 : Wetwork Pure And Simple (based on the mission written by Mark Edwards)

John stretched, sitting upright like he was just about to get out of bed. His whole body was stiff like he had slept for a week, and when he pinged his commlink for the date he saw it had been four days. It had felt like it was much longer in the Resonance Realms, something like an out of body trip, where John had deepened his understanding of the matrix and all a little bit.

Groaning, John stood and stretched to try and get his body feeling better. He then grabbed a change of clothes, showered, and while he was air drying hit his pitiful excuse of a kitchen for food. All the while his mind kept drifting to his absent roommate, Mina, and then to Irina Klavikov, the psychotic woman that had shot Mina in the back. And that was in between an occasional stab of pain in his shoulders or back.

After a snack, getting dressed, and having another snack, John switched his commlink's WiFi on to check for messages in case he missed anything during his four day out of body trip. There were messages that Hunter had sent him about Mina, one each evening, but they were all pretty much the same. Mina was okay, which was about as far as he felt like reading.

The afternoon was spent going over his Katana-11 again, trying to keep Mina out of his mind. He kept feeling like there was more he needed to do to fix it, but about all there was was the damaged radar system. He opted to just remove it rather than try fixing it.

Just as he got it out, his commlink started ringing. It was not Hunter, so he set it aside so the camera would not catch his face and answered it with a thought.

"Is this Cypher?" he heard a familiar voice say.

"Yeah, I go by that name." John said as he began to secure the side fairing of his motorcycle back into place.

"I'm Jaron Falcone." Jaron said.

"Yeah, I know you. Recovered a package for you few months back."

"Got word from a friend of a friend the two of you can help out with some wetwork." Jaron said, "And that you two can keep your mouths shut. For a test you've got a job. Meet Mr. Johnson at Café Giovanni at ten P.M."

"It's just me." John said, almost gritting his teeth, "Firefly's… not here. Not available."

"Fine then. You'll do." Jaron said sharply.

Feeling that the connection was still open, John asked, "Anything else?"

"Not unless you've got questions." Jaron said.

"None you can answer." John told him with a grunt as he tightened a bolt.

"Café Giovanni. Ten P.M. Tonight." Jaron said before ending the call.

John knelt at his motorcycle's side, running his hand over the faring where it had gotten shot the week before and thinking about how Mina had used a spell to fix the hole. It looked brand new, perfectly smooth and polished black like it had never been damaged.

While wrapping up his work on his motorcycle, John did a few data searches on Café Giovanni. Finding out it was one of the really high class restaurants in the Hub, John opted to dress up in his three piece suit, and managed to tie his necktie into a proper Windsor with help from an ARO guide. He also left most of his handguns behind, leaving only his holdouts up his sleeves. He hoped he would not need the extra firepower.

Getting through the checkpoint into the CAS sector was surprisingly easy, and even though he circled around the hub to the west side, getting through the border into the Hub was a pain. He was thankful that the border guards did not take his motorcycle to take apart, unlike a Land Rover he saw that was half way to being stripped to the frame.

Finding himself a place to park was not too difficult. The building Café Giovanni was in had a portion of its underground parking allocated for their patrons, and mentioning a meeting with Mr. Johnson got him inside. From there it was an elevator ride up to the café.

John certainly felt dressed for the occasion when he stepped off the elevator. Café Giovanni was a restaurant that oozed class. Salarymen with outfits more expensive than what John had in nuyen dominated the tables, and these were made from real wood stained a dark rosy red. Similarly stained real wood paneling and framed artwork adorned the walls, and brass edged fans hung from the ceiling slowly turning. Acting like he had always done this, John walked up to the maitre d's podium.

"Name?" the maitre d' asked.

"Party for Johnson." John told him.

The maitre d' gave John a critical look up and down. "If you'll come with me, please." he said.

John silently followed as he was led back to the private rooms. The other patrons completely ignored them as they walked by.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" a hostess asked when they reached a closed door.

"Cola will be fine." John said as he was let into the room. He briefly wondered if he could have ordered beer and she would have delivered it.

"I wish you a pleasant evening." the maitre d' told him.

The room was more like a banquet hall. A large wooden table dominated the center of the room, large enough to comfortably seat at least twelve people. A large stone fireplace dominated the wall to John's right, and at the opposite side was an extensive buffet table.

It looked like Mr. Johnson was seated at the head of the table. He was human, deeply tanned, with brown eyes and short cut dark hair, and wore a dark gray business suit that looked very expensive. Behind him stood another human and an ork, wearing black suits and matching sunglasses. Bulges at their chests told John they were armed.

Already seated at the table, and eating, were two others. One looked like an ork, though he was a bit scrawnier than John expected an ork to ever look like, with a lean build, short cut curly black hair, and relatively short tusks. The other looked human, until John saw him reach out with a second left arm for a napkin while cutting a portion of food with the other two. His face unnerved John as well, as in place of regular eyes were a pair of camera lenses. These cybereyes were not quite what unnerved John, but the extra two that protruded from his forehead immediately above the two that were in his eye sockets gave the man quite an alien look. They both wore suits, far from as expensive as what any patron wore, but were at least classy enough to not stand out too much.

Mr. Johnson stood, saying, "Welcome. Please, help yourself to the buffet."

John did just that, collecting a plate and taking samples of the more appealing fair available. With a loaded plate he turned to the table to sit down on the side with the ork. He felt like he wanted to keep his distance from the four-eyed man. Something about him felt… wrong.

Along with the delivery of his drink a women entered the room, and was also dressed rather nicely. She was curvaceous, with skin almost as black as her long flowing hair that almost hid her pointed ears. Her dress was black and seemed to shimmer as she moved.

Mr. Johnson stood again, saying "Welcome, please help yourself to the buffet. So, young man, what do you do in your spare time?"

It took a moment for John to realize that Mr. Johnson was directly asking him that question. "Uh, I mess around a lot with some drones I got and my motorcycle." he said.

"Yeah? What you got?" the ork at his left asked.

"A twenty-seventy Katana-11." John said.

"A kid's bike." the ork commented.

"Well, I am a kid." John returned. "And I modified it, smart tires, biggest turbo I could find, and upped the horsepower."

"Wasted effort."

"And what about you?" Mr. Johnson asked, looking at the ork.

"A bit of working out. Following the urban brawl leagues." the ork said.

After it looked like everyone had a good chance to eat, and a lot of chit chat, Mr. Johnson changed the subject.

"Right, down to business." Mr. Johnson said. "As I'm sure you've already figured, I'm Mr. Johnson and I've got some wetwork for you to help me with. If any of you have a problem with that, now's the time to leave."

John figured if he had a problem with killing someone for the money that he would have declined the job when Falcone first called him. He took the time to look at the others, seeing the other two men looking quite comfortable with this, the dark skinned woman he could not quite read.

No one stood to leave.

"Okay. Your target is in the Pueblo Corporate Council, there you must find and terminate him, though there's a few conditions you must follow. First, you must complete this job within the next three days. Second, his death must look accidental. Third, you must minimize collateral damage. Your payment will be six thousand nuyen each, half now and half once I've been able to confirm the job has been done."

When it looked like Mr. Johnson was now waiting for everyone to accept the job or not, John sighed.

"Something wrong, kid?" the dark skinned woman asked.

"Yeah. I got paid more to catch a murderer alive last month, and it didn't sound like a pain in the ass like this." John told them.

"Really, who?" the dark skinned elf asked.

"Kazuya 'The Dragon' Hotomi." John said. He did not like digging up the memories of Catherine being shot in the head by her own father. Then thinking that only Mina had a real clue how deeply he had been affected made him feel even worse.

"Ha! A yak assassin don't count!" cried the ork.

"How about for murdering his own daughter?" John asked. "He blew her brains out with a sniper rifle the month before that."

The dark skinned elf was just about to take a bite of her cake, and instead she placed the laden fork back on the plate. "Was it the Westmore girl?" she asked.

"Yeah." John said solemnly. It would not have been difficult to figure out for anyone who kept up with the news in Denver, not like it was a regular thing for SINner children to get shot in the head.

"I don't see the point." the four-eyed man said.

"Think he's saying he's not gonna do this job for less than what he was paid for bringing in The Dragon." the dark skinned elf said.

"Just how much were you paid for that?" the ork asked.

"Eleven thousand." John told them.

The ork looked quite surprised.

"Seems like quite a bit." Mr. Johnson said.

"Hey, you want some sloppy cracker using script kiddies that'll work for six grand, go look up Dean Costello and give him a call." John said. "Bet he'll do it for six."

"And you're not sloppy?" the ork asked.

"Hardly." John said. "Look, make it ten grand, three now, the rest later, and I'll make it so it looks like you guys were never there as far as their matrix security's concerned."

"You that much a hotshot hacker?" the ork asked.

"Raven calls me the Michelangelo of the Matrix." John said.

"Raven, as in…?" the dark skinned elf started to ask.

"One of the heads of the Koshari?" the ork finished.

"Yeah, that's him." John said as he looked at the men. His potential teammates for this job did not look too convinced, but there was something about Mr. Johnson that John could not quite figure out. Maybe he was deep in thought, John thought.

"Right then, I'm with the kid." the dark skinned elf said, "It looks like he's gonna be doing the matrix solo, I know you ain't a hacker or a decker, H.M," she pointed to the four-eyed man, "and I've got the feelin' I'm gonna be doing the magic solo. If this guy's as big a target as I'm thinkin', I've got my work cut out for me, too."

"You say you were paid eleven thousand to catch a murderer." Mr. Johnson said thoughtfully, looking at John.

Before he could say anything more, the doors to their room were thrown open. Looking up, John saw a human woman stumble in.

"Can we help you?" Mr. Johnson asked, standing.

"No, no." the woman said as she staggered deeper into the room, leaning against the buffet table behind John. "Just looking for a bathroom."

"She's lying!" the dark skinned elf declared.

The intruding woman suddenly straightened and turned to run.

The ork was quick to jump from his chair to give chase. Just as quick John twitched his right arm as he stood, and before the ork had made half the length of the room John had lined up a shot and fired.

The woman dropped before she even reached the door.

"Holy shit!" cussed the ork as John coolly walked over to the downed woman. "What the hell you packin'?" he asked as he walked over to them.

"Taser rounds." John answered as he walked up to the woman, keeping his holdout trained on her.

"What'd he do?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Shot her in the head." the ork said, examining the unconscious woman.

"Now just how'd you know she's a liar?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"Just a spell I had going." the dark skinned elf said.

John found her commlink easy enough, and went straight to a brute force attack on its firewall without passing his own signal through either of his commlinks. The paper thin digital barrier shattered like pure glass on concrete. First thing he did was bring up a list of connected devices, and aside from a set of contact lenses he found a camera.

"What's she got?" the ork asked.

"Hold on a sec." John said, digging up the most recent files on her commlink. One of them he noticed was a video file, with a note file saved just before the video was created. The note file looked like a rough draft for a scream sheet. When he played it back he saw a recording that looked like was taken right from her point of view. The recording itself was of everyone in the room. "Bitch." John muttered, restraining the urge to kick the unconscious woman in the head.

"What is it?" the dark skinned elf asked.

"She's a reporter. She's got a vid of all of us." John answered as he corrupted the video file instead of deleting it. He also sought after the most recently active files, looking for anything related to why she had broken into their meeting. What he found he also corrupted to useless binary data.

"Well then, delete it!" cried the ork.

"Doin' more than that." John growled. Through the journalist's commlink he accessed the camera, which turned out to be an image recorder implanted in her left eye. He disabled the camera's direct neural interface, rigged it so it would only accept a direct peer-to-peer connection with another device, and set a long and completely chaotic passcode to allow it to be enabled for any kind of recording.

"What do you mean?" Mr. Johnson asked.

The reporter groaned as she started to regain consciousness.

"Corrupting data so backups get fucked, and a long ass passcode to get her eye implant to do anything." John said as he started doing some creative cleaning in the journalist's commlink and personal network. This also included wiping out all evidence that the implant had even been activated, along with corrupting a copy of its latest recording. At least her commlink had no data chips plugged into it, nor was it transmitting data to anyone else.

"What hit me?" the journalist asked as she pushed herself onto her back.

The ork, having found the stick-n-shock bullet held it for the journalist to see.

"Oh."

"You're lucky." John said.

"Oh, really?" she asked sarcastically as she sat upright.

John knelt by the journalist. With a twitch of his left hand he caught his other holdout. "This one's got armor piercing." he told her, "If I was on the other side, I'd've used it instead."

The ork whistled.

Stepping back, John said, "I say you can go now. You got nothing for whatever the fuck you're lookin' for."

The ork stand, and did not help the journalist to her feet.

"What the hell'd you do?!" cried the journalist.

"Corrupted your article and put a sixty-four character passcode on your cyber cam so you can't record shit. The DNI's not gonna work, either." John told her.

"Little brat!" the Journalist growled. She almost went to strike John, but checked herself when he held up his two handguns. John could tell she did not just look at him, watching as her eyes darted from one person to another.

"Hey, I could've just fuckin' wiped your 'link to factory settings." John growled back.

"I think it's time for you to leave, miss." Mr. Johnson said.

Looking like she realized she was not going to get anywhere further, the journalist turned and left. John and the ork walked back to their seats, John letting his holdouts slide back up his sleeves.

"As I was saying, eleven thousand nuyen." Mr. Johnson said.

John noticed a call going out from the journalist's commlink.

"I think that'll be perfectly fine from what I just saw." Mr. Johnson continued.

"Alright then." the ork said, "I'm in."

John only half listened to the journalist's call, which was apparently to an electronics expert she knew. After hearing her say a few choice words about him, John pulled on the resonance, and with a little help from a crack sprite he stashed a bit of explosive code attached to her cyber camera, with some weaving back and forth to keep the data bomb from self erasing whenever it was tripped.

"Okay." H.M. added.

"Good 'nough for me." John said before taking another bite of his food. When the journalist mentioned a need to see about recovering data, rather than whatever scoop she was trying to get, John decided to disconnect himself from her commlink. He felt confident that what he did was enough to keep her from figuring out things she did not need to know. John also thought he would actually earn the verbal, behind the back, insults she had given him as well.

"Me too." the dark skin elf added.

Mr. Johnson smiled a little, and forwarded everyone fifty-five hundred nuyen, which surprised John. He then pulled out a dossier and slid it to the ork. "There's directions to the lodge where the target is, with satellite images of it. There's also holopics and a secured commcode number in the data chip in there."

The ork found the data chip and passed it to John. John immediately slotted it into a port in his goggles. Scanning it John found it had just what Mr. Johnson said was on it. Among the images, however, were no floor plans or blueprints of the lodge itself.

"The target's name is Wapasha Blackwolf." Mr. Johnson continued, and John found one holopic with a matching name. That same pic had another man that looked like Mr. Johnson. With a thought he had an ARO open and was starting a data search on the name.

"Make sure you make his death look accidental." Mr. Johnson continued, "This is a personal matter between him and myself. You don't need to worry as any repercussions from this are on him or myself. He'll be at the lodge for only another three days. After that he's completely out of your reach."

First bits of data John collected on Wapasha Blackwolf was that he was the Chief Financial Officer of XRC Inc., whatever that was. With a thought he opened up another ARO to do a search on that.

"What kind of security are we looking at here?" the ork asked.

"Because of his position he's entitled to a professional team. Two bodyguards and a magician; the lodge has a security rigger. Wapasha can also afford to hire his own personal extra guards." Mr. Johnson said.

XRC Inc. turned out to be a shortened for Xeverus Cosmetics Research, a company that tested and sold cosmetics, and were a subsidiary of Evo, one of the Big Ten megacorporations of the world. With their target being the CFO, John figured that Wapasha could afford to hire several personal bodyguards.

"No blueprints of this place?" the ork asked.

"Couldn't get them on such short notice." Mr. Johnson answered.

"Got a few ideas where to get copies." John mused. His search on Wapasha turned up a recent news article about his promotion to Chairman Of The Board when the owner of the company, Margaret Xeverus was murdered. He opened up a third ARO to do a search on her.

"You said this was in the PCC?" the dark skinned elf asked.

"Yes. In Leadville." Mr. Johnson said.

"Got the address of the lodge in the data." the ork added.

"Contact me when the job's done. Once I've verified the 'accident', I'll set a meet for the rest of your payment.

"Right then, let's go get our shit and get going." the ork said as he stood.

John took one last mouthful of his cola before joining up with the others as they left. Like when John came in, the other diners virtually ignored them as they walked through the restaurant. During this time John learned that Margaret Xeverus was murdered by an environmental extremist group called EarthFirst! and left her husband, Alesandro Ibáñez, as owner of the company without voting rights, with Wapasha taking her place on the board. There were also a few tidbits about Wapasha and Alesandro not getting along together. He saved notes to his goggles and started a search on Alesandro Ibáñez.

The elevator was empty when the doors opened for them, and John went right to a corner to lean against the walls.

"Got any questions, kid?" the ork asked.

"Just where are we gonna meet up?" John asked, "I wanna go home and change, and you guys sure as hell ain't welcome." He was already reading a bit about Alesandro, the Euro-playboy from Madrid. Aside from finding more information that he already knew, John did find some images and found they were of Mr. Johnson.

"Surprised you're not asking us what we do next." the ork said.

"Legwork, research, gear. Already know it." John said. "At least I already know who we're working for. He's the owner of Xeverus Cosmetics Research, and the other guy's the Chairman Of The Board."

The ork and dark skinned elf groaned.

"Best to save the rest till later." H.M. flatly said.

The elevator doors opened up for them in the basement. John waited for the others to step out before he did.

"So, where are we gonna meet up?" John asked.

"There's a parking garage half a klick south of Happenstance." the ork said, "We'll meet up at the bar first."

"Got it, Griff." the dark skinned elf said.

John only gave a thumbs up as he walked off for his motorcycle.

Getting out of the Hub was not too difficult, but John opted to take a coyote path into the UCAS sector. There he changed out of his suit for his form fitting body armor and jacket, all of his handguns, including his laser pistol and extra Predator, and other gear in his backpack. He also changed out ID chips in his commlink, choosing a new one that said it was legal for him to carry his monofilament sword.

While he changed, John also sent off a message to Tabby with questions about the other runners he was working with this time. He was hoping he would not be in deep shit with these people or would have to be watching out for his own ass. He was just about to leave home for Happenstance when he got a message back.

The ork, Griff, Tabby knew to have some bioware implants, and while he was lean and wiry for an ork he was exceptionally agile and fast. He used this to his advantage for breaking and entering work, but Tabby warned that he was not to be counted on in a fight unless his back was to the wall.

The dark skinned elf went by the name Wynter, Tabby told him. She was a shamanic magician that went more for manipulation and illusions for spells, and was good at communing with the spirits.

The four-eyed man known as H.M. was supposedly loaded with cyberware, or so Tabby told him. His name was shortened for 'Howling Mad', and she warned that he was becoming rather disconnected from others due to how much chrome he had shoved into his body. Relatively unskilled in hacking, he seemed to relate more to the drones he had instead of people. She did also tell him that H.M. was a changeling, though did not know of anything more than his extra pair of arms that sprouted from his chest below his original arms.

Tabby finished her message by telling John that they were known to work together on many jobs. John took this to mean that he was probably still going to have to bust his ass to prove himself to them.

It was back to the coyote path to go back into the CAS sector. Unlike times before, John had to wait hidden inside the building while many Lone Star patrol cars went by. After waiting about ten minutes after the last patrol car went by, John carefully snuck out and made his way towards Happenstance.

It was well past midnight when John finally got to Happenstance. The others were easy enough to find, particularly H.M. with his four camera eyes sticking out of his face as he leaned against the side of a neutral gray Bulldog van. It also looked like John was last one to arrive.

"You're late, kid." Griff said as John pulled into a parking spot close to the others.

"Got held up a bit on the way over." John told them, "Had to wait to avoid some cops."

"Cops are the least of our troubles." Wynter said, "Guess you haven't checked the newsfeeds yet."

Griff brought up a public ARO and flipped it over to him.

The ARO framed several trideo feeds at once, all focused in the PCC sector. Scanning the text, John read that a war had erupted between the Ghostriders and the Godz go-gangs, and it seemed that after one fight had been quelled by PuebSec another would start elsewhere.

It almost looked like the whole sector had gone into a complete lockdown.

"Shit." cussed John.

"Isn't it? They'll be scrutinizing IDs and everything now at the border, not to mention that it'll take several hours to get past at any time, not just rush hour." Wynter said.

"Sounds like a great way to lose a fake ID." John said.

"Yeah. Had a coyote tell me to wait till things settle down. Security should ease up then." Wynter said.

H.M. grunted.

"Yeah, not gonna do. Last gang war that erupted lasted a week." Griff told them.

John figured he would have to look up the details of the last gang war. He certainly did not recall one happening for as long as he could remember, which was still measured in months. He checked the trideo feeds again. "Only coyote trails I know are getting fucked over." he said. "Doubt Stalker could help."

"He can't. Already called him." Griff said.

John nodded.

"I'm waiting for a fixer to call me back." H.M. told them. "Said he might know someone."

John slumped his shoulders. Already he was feeling like he wanted this job to be over and done with.

"Don't worry about it." Wynter said, "Don't be upset that this run isn't as fast as you expected."

"Kid seems calm about it." commented Griff.

"Spent a day on a stakeout before hitting the place." John said.

"So you're not new to the game?" Griff asked.

"Certainly not." Wynter said, "Got word from a few, but there's not a whole lot I could get on him. Almost no data, and just word of mouth about you, Cypher."

"This kid's Cypher?" H.M. asked, "I don't believe it."

John sighed.

"Sure is." Wynter said. "Though I've been wondering why he's alone."

"I'd rather not talk about that." John said darkly.

"Okay." Wynter said.

"You sure this's Cypher?" Griff asked.

"You trust her magic?" John asked.

Griff only nodded.

"Got your truth spell going?" John asked Wynter.

Wynter closed her dark eyes for a moment. "Got it now." she said as she opened them again.

"My street name's Cypher, and two weeks ago I speed hacked through two hardened corporate lodge firewalls at the WinterLand ski resort, and didn't set off an alert."

"Quite a boast, kid." H.M. said darkly. "When exactly?"

"Heard on one of Wharez Waldo's trid shows he got in on some corp party there about then. Had an inside scoop that Carl Axiom ain't some badass that he's been laying out to be. Certainly didn't think a troll could e laid out so easily."

"Who'd you think told the elf the fight was staged?" asked John.

"You?" Griff asked.

Wynter took a deep breath. "Shit." she cussed as she let it out. "He ain't lyin'."

"Your spell could be wrong." H.M. flatly said.

"Only if someone's rewritten, what, months of this kid's memory?" Wynter countered.

From behind his goggles John closed his eyes, wishing someone could unlock his memory from before March.

"The Dragon, the Westmore girl, all of it," Wynter continued, "everything he's said while I've had my lie detector spell on has been truth. Yes, a magician could alter his memory, but it won't last forever."

"Try lyin' to her." H.M. suggested.

John thought a moment for something a little outrageous. When he had his idea he said, "I'm a twenty-five year old elf, genetically altered so I like a twelve year old boy." He noticed Wynter wince as he said that.

"Yeah, that's a lie." Griff said. "Though I once met an elf who did that. Then he did something stupid and raped a girl. Last I heard he was ghoul food."

John found the punishment fitting.

"You finally accepting it?" Wynter asked.

"You vouchin' for him?" Griff asked.

"I am." Wynter strongly said.

"Okay." H.M. said. "Hang on, got a call."

"Alright then." Griff said.

John took a deep breath. Hopefully the bullshit about who he was and his skill were over and done with.

"We've got a way across." H.M. declared.

"We caravan or carpool?" asked Wynter.

"Carpool." John said.

"I'm with him. Carpool" Griff added.

"Right." H.M. said, turning to his van and climbing in.

Griff led the way, riding in what John thought was one of the odder vehicles he had ever seen. It was a Horizon-Doble Revolution, a monocycle where a single person sat inside the wheel. Sensors and an augmented reality display allowed the rider to actually see clearly ahead, rather than try to look around the wheel.

Wynter's car, if you could call it that, almost looked as odd. The silver Leyland-Zil Tsarina looked like it was a two seat cockpit of an attack helicopter, with two front wheels and a third at the back.

The parking garage was not too far away, and had actually been part of an Aztechnology owned corporation before Ghostwalker came. During the white dragon's assault on the Aztlan sector, the office building and its detached parking garage were leveled. Later, when Atechnology had been ejected from the city and the CAS had taken over the sector, a larger parking structure had been built in its place.

Griff assured the others their vehicles would be safe. A quick search in the matrix pulled up an extremely low crime rate for the immediate area, which satisfied John more.

The inside of H.M.'s van was not quite what John expected. Some of what would have normally been cargo space had been replaced with two benches, and John noticed a large bulge in the ceiling at the back of the van.

John took off his sword belt and placed his sword on the floor next to a seat on the right side of the van, sliding his backpack off and shoving it underneath, before he sat down in it. Griff took one of the front seats with H.M., while Wynter took the bench seat on the other side of the van. His own seat was a lot more comfortable than he expected.

"How long till we meet up with the guy?" Wynter asked as she sat down.

"About ten minutes." H.M. said.

"And how long was it till we were supposed to meet this guy?" Griff asked as H.M. pulled out onto Colorado Boulevard and headed south.

"Twenty minutes from when the fixer called." H.M. said.

"Sounds like we'll be there right on time, if we're lucky." muttered Griff.

At the moment John could have cared less if they were early, late, or spot on time. He wanted more to do so hopefully he could keep Mina out of his mind.

"If you need something to do," Wynter said as H.M. pulled out onto I-25 and turned west, "you could see about hacking us some floor plans to this lodge."

"It'll take too long. Too risky to do it fast." John said without looking at her.

"And yet you're the one that speed hacked two corp nodes last week."

"Kid says it's too risky, then it's too risky." Griff said.

"Besides, I knew right where to go and all." John said, "This time, I gotta fuck about to try and find the shit we need. Don't wanna be bashing around like a drunken troll."

It was not long until H.M. pulled off the highway and started heading north. A few minutes later he was turning into a mall's parking lot. There were virtually no cars here at the late hour.

"Is this contact even here?" Griff asked, peeking around to try and see as much as possible outside of the van.

H.M. took his pick of empty parking spaces, choosing one that would fit the length of his van. "We are a little early." he said.

There they waited for some time, but no one else showed up.

"Can I get some air?" asked John, breaking the silence.

"I think we all could use some fresh air." added Wynter.

Not just John, but everyone got out of the van. The cool, summer night air smelled nicer than the stuffy van, even with the hint of pollution. He noticed Wynter pulling out a small respirator mask and secure it over her nose and mouth.

"Everyone look around." Griff said, "I don't like being in the open like this. Too weird no one's here."

John opted to feel more than look, seeking out every wireless device he could find and that could talk to him within a roughly four hundred meter radius. There was not a whole lot that he could find, though in listening, in a fashion, he thought there was something odd going on. He tugged on the threads of the resonance to bolster a complex form, closing his eyes as he focused on this odd signal. Fire erupted around his skull, but faded almost completely as the signal sharpened. After a little bit of focusing on the signal it resolved itself as a trideo feed of H.M.'s van and themselves.

Using the view from the trideo, John opened his eyes and looked around to try and see what was watching them.

"I'm not seeing anything, Griff." Wynter said.

"Someone's watching us." John said, pointing off towards the source of the trideo. He could see himself pointing straight at whatever it was, and started seeking out whatever devices were there.

"You sure, kid?" Griff asked.

"Found it." H.M. announced, "Sikorsky-Bell microskimmer."

About that time John found the drone and went straight to a forceful approach to get through its firewall.

"Try and hack it, kid." Griff said.

"You're too slow. I'm already through its firewall." John told him as he logged into the drone.

"Shit." Griff cussed.

A quick look around inside the skimmer drone's node showed another user's icon with an outbound signal. Using the drone as a relay he sought out the other end of the trail and found what he guessed was someone's commlink.

"You finding anything?" Wynter asked.

John had just started to force his way through the next firewall when he started to lose his connection to the drone. When he thought he might have been discovered he noticed from the trideo feed that it was moving away from them. Soon the drone it was beyond his reach.

"Nothing." John said.

"It moved away." H.M. added.

"You lost it?" Griff asked.

"Can't help it if it's out of range." John said.

"Couldn't you like relay through H.M.'s van or something?" Griff asked.

"No good if the drone's not in range of anything useful." H.M. said flatly.

"And I think it might've changed its ID, too." John growled. "It was ghosting, so I'd have to track that down first. Real pain in the fucking ass." He opted to not add anything about how the skimmer drone could have been programmed about communicating with other devices. It was possible, though not always common, to have any wireless device communicate only with those it was within a mutual signal range with.

Griff gritted his teeth.

Fortunately they did not have to wait long as another van came down the street and turned into the parking lot. John rested his hand on the grip of his Warhawk as the gray unmarked van turned and parked into a space three spots down from where H.M. had parked. So far, so good, John thought. That was as long as a S.W.A.T. team did not jump out and started shooting them up.

A Hispanic dwarf climbed out of the van, scowling and muttering in what John guessed was Spanish. He had very short black hair and beard. John also caught the glint of three datajacks in his left temple as the dwarf walked up to them. John did not relax.

"Which one of you's H.M.?" the dwarf asked in clean English.

H.M. simply raised a hand.

"And you are?" Griff asked.

"Call me Loco." the dwarf said.

"He's it." H.M. said.

John let his hand slip from his Warhawk.

"So what's the catch?" Griff asked. "We need you to cross the border, but what's in it for you?"  
"Protection." Loco said, "The entrance this side is in a secured part of an old rending plant. Ghouls sometimes come wandering in 'cause of the smell. Takes too long to open the gate when there's ghouls prowling about."

"So we follow you and take care of the ghouls while you deal with the door?" Griff asked.

"That's it." Loco said, still scowling.

"Just how many we talkin' about?" Griff asked.

"No clue."

"Anything else we should know about? Knight or Star response times?" Wynter asked.

"Rarely for the Knight. Star don't come." Loco told them. "Door's underground, so don't worry about gunfire gettin' reported."

"Where to?" H.M. asked.

"Just follow me." Loco said as he climbed back into his van.

John reclaimed his seat as everyone piled back into H.M.'s van.

"I'm surprised you're not thinking we should get paid for this?" Griff asked John as H.M. pulled out of the parking space and started following behind Loco's van.

"Usually you gotta pay coyotes." John said. "How many more dumbass questions you gonna ask me?"

"Kid ain't a newbie." Wynter added.

"Fuck! Hang on!" cried Griff as H.M. suddenly took a sharp turn.

It looked like Loco earned his name as he drove recklessly through the plant. John could barely see around H.M. or Griff as he did his best to hang onto his chair as H.M. tailed the dwarf's van closely. Even inside of H.M.'s van, John could smell the rotten stench of the rending plant outside.

Something thumped against the van. "What the hell was that?" Wynter asked.

There was another thump, quickly followed by a jolt as H.M. drove his van a little too close to a factory machine.

"Can't we slow down?" John asked.

"I don't pick up hitchhikers." H.M. told them.

Somewhere along the line John figured they had gotten underground, though that did not stop the crazy rollercoaster ride Loco was leading them on. Thankfully for John's stomach they had soon reached the end as H.M. stopped right behind Loco's van.

"Fight time." groaned Griff through gritted teeth.

John quickly put his sword belt back on, and was the last one out of the back of H.M.'s van.

"Shit!" cried Wynter, and John saw her kick a ghoul that he guessed had managed to hang onto H.M.'s van. Even though Wynter kicked had kicked it to the ground, it clearly was not dead as it tried to regain its feet.

Though not as quick as the gunslingers of old, John drew his Warhawk and shot the gray skinned ghoul. The explosive bullet almost blew away the ghoul's left shoulder, but this time when it went down it stayed down.

"Just kick their fuckin' asses!" John yelled as he turned to face down the tunnel they had just came. Seeing the number of ghouls coming their way, John holstered his Warhawk and drew both of his Predators. The pistols chambered lethal rounds as soon as his fingers wrapped around the grips.

"I am so going to pay for this in the morning." Wynter said. Next to her a spirit materialized. It looked like a male lion at first, but half again as tall at the shoulder, with a crocodile's tail, vulture's legs for its front legs, and a crocodile's head with a lion's mane.

They were all in a sizable room, and opposite of the tunnel was a large door that looked like was hardened against anything short of a nuclear strike.

"How much time you need?" Griff called out.

"Thirty seconds to open and close!" Loco yelled back.

Two gunshots rang out, and John heard what he figured was a ghoul howl in pain. Bloodied and pissed off, it charged. John managed to squeeze off a shot, hitting it square in the chest as the explosive bullet sent it falling backwards.

Wynter stepped back as her spirit tore into one ghoul with a vengeance, its massive jaws crushing it like an alligator would crush a deer.

"Fuck!" cussed John as he shot once with each Predator, dropping the ghoul in its tracks. Another pair of shots dropped another ghoul that was behind it.

"Looks like you've got a nasty spirit this time, Wynter." Griff commented from behind them.

John shot twice more from each Predator, dropping two more ghouls as they rushed in. Their milky white eyes were starting to gross him out. It would have been extra freaky watching the blind beings rushing at them with such ferocity if he already did not know that ghouls did not need their eyes to see.

"Shit!" Wynter cussed, and John noticed a ghoul that had gotten too close to her keel over.

The spirit's roar in frustration was briefly drowned out by more gunfire from John's and H.M.'s pistols. This time the ghoul did not fall over dead, and John had to throw himself backwards to avoid getting his face torn up by the ghoul's clawed hand. It had gotten so close that he could smell the raw meat rotting between its pointed teeth. John surprised even himself when he neatly came back up to his feet after the backwards tumble.

Dropping his pistols, John drew his monofilament sword. Acting faster than the stunned ghoul expected, he slashed out at it. The ghoul tried to leap back, but the sword's length was a little more than expected as John disemboweled the ghoul.

Another ghoul came at John, and he easily ducked the scabrous hand. With both hands on the grip of his sword, John spun around to try and chop the ghoul in half from behind. The blade bit deep into the ghoul's back, and the ghoul fell face first to the ground. To make sure the ghoul was dead, John reversed his grip on his sword and plunged the blade point first through its heart.

Looking around, John could not see any more ghouls still standing. He figured they were no longer in danger as Wynter's chimera-like spirit disappeared. He also noticed the security door was now wide open and H.M.'s van was slowly rolling into the next room.

"Everyone okay?" Wynter asked.

Planting a foot on the ghoul's body for leverage, John pulled his sword free, grunting, "Yeah." He thought he heard the ghoul's ribs crack from under his weight as the blade slid free.

"Don't put it away just yet." he heard Griff say as John was about to sheath his sword. "Loco's got some stuff to help clean it."

John said nothing as he held out the blood stained sword blade. He had planned on just wiping it off on the ragged clothes of a dead ghoul.

"Here." Griff said, now holding a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol and a rag. John held his sword out while Griff poured the alcohol over the blade. "Ghoul blood's infectious." he said as John was extra careful to not cut himself while wiping off the excess alcohol, drying the blade.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I know." John said, rather annoyed, "Get some in an open wound and I'll become one." Many budget trideo programs kept running commercials on the dangers of associating with the infected, particularly ghouls.

The door was noisy and seemed painfully slow to John as it slowly came back down behind them. He wondered how he missed the noise earlier when it opened.

"Those things can't break it down, can they?" asked Wynter, handing John his pistols once he was done cleaning his sword and had sheathed it.

"Not a chance." Loco said, "That door's built to take on more than any ghoul can bring. Besides, if there's any more around they'll be more interested in those dead ghouls out there."

Only now did John notice the wet smell of this room. Looking around the vans he saw a makeshift dock with an ancient looking tugboat moored to it. The dock and boat had both been built to allow a vehicle to be driven onto the boat.

H.M. drove his van onto the boat, with some guidance from Loco. There H.M. and Griff secured the van while Loco prepared his boat for departure. Once they were set, Loco loosed the moorings and they were off.

It was slow going on the tugboat, with nearly no lights to guide their way and a complete absence of WiFi signals. John hoped this part of the trip would not take too long as he tried to avoid scratching hi itchy feeling skin. All he could do was sit on a large tool box and watch the tunnel slowly disappear behind them.

"Pretty handy with a sword." he heard Wynter say as she sat down on the box next to John.

"Thanks." John muttered.

"Practice much?"

"A while ago. Kinda helped keep my mind off things."

"Oh." Wynter said. John was glad she did not ask as he now thought of Mina and how she was still slowly recovering from her near fatal gunshot wounds.

"So just where is your other half?" Wynter asked, "You two break up or something?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." snapped John.

"I could always try probing your mind, you know." Wynter told him.

Bearing his teeth, John snapped both of his holdouts into his hands.

"Relax!" Wynter cried, holding up both of her hands.

"I said I don't wanna talk about it." John reiterated.

"C'mon, maybe we should get some sleep." Wynter said, changing the subject.

John had to admit he was also feeling tired as well as itchy. He climbed into the van after Wynter did, and dropped himself onto the bench he had claimed earlier. He noticed Wynter had laid down on the other.

Sleep came quickly for him.

"Hey, time to wake up." he heard Wynter say as she shook his shoulder.

Yawning, John stiffly sat up. "What time is it?" he asked.

"'Bout six." Wynter said, "We're at a McHugh's for breakfast, so come on."

The sun was already creeping up from behind the overgrown trees that were across the road from them.

Breakfast was to go, and it was not long until they were heading west on Sixth Avenue. The van drove itself, along with the morning traffic, while everyone ate. Every so often a news alert would pop up on their commlinks, warning about continued fighting between the Godz and the Ghostriders. John wondered for a moment if he could call up Felicity and see if she could get the Ghostriders to ignore H.M.'s van as they made their way out of Denver.

"So when do you plan on getting us those floor plans?" Griff asked just as they passed under I-70. H.M. was already taking the off ramp to switch over to I-70.

John finished taking a drink from his chocolate flavored soy milk before answering, "As soon as I'm finished eating." It was not quite true, as while eating breakfast John had already been checking ahead to make sure there would be no interruption of wireless signals along the highway. Barring any surprises, I-70 was completely covered all the way.

"What the hell was that?" Wynter asked.

"Oh shit." Griff cussed.

John leaned forward so he could look ahead, and saw the trailing smoke of a mushroom cloud. He could also feel the van slowing down to match everyone else on the highway.

"See if we can push on." Griff said.

H.M. had to pull over onto the shoulder to keep going as much of the traffic John could see had now stopped. A short distance later he noticed more than one vehicle had now been abandoned.

"Not a good idea." H.M. told them, bringing his van to a halt.

"What's going on?" Wynter asked.

"Gang fight." H.M. said, "Someone's got a machinegun up there."

John groaned.

"Can you see them?" Wynter asked.

"Not clearly enough to get a shot." H.M. said.

"Doubt you could get a spell off, either." Griff added.

John pulled his backpack out from under his seat. He wasted no time in digging out the Predator and Redline, along with the spare magazine and extra batteries.

"What're you thinking?" asked Griff.

"I think," John said, shoving the magazine and batteries into a coat pocket, "we ain't goin' nowhere 'til that gunner's taken care of."

"And you're gonna do it?" Griff asked.

John flipped the Predator around in his hand and offered the grip to Griff. "You can if you want." he said. When it looked like Griff was not going to take the pistol, John flipped it back around. "What I thought." he said as he walked to the back doors, shoving the oversized laser pistol into his other coat pocket.

"Aren't you gonna stop him?" Griff asked.

"Actually, I'm going with him." Wynter said.

"Can't you just hide the van with a spell or something?" Griff asked.

"Easier to hide ourselves to sneak up on them." Wynter said as John opened a door.

John had only gotten a handful of steps along the side of H.M.'s van before Wynter stopped him.

"Let me call up a spirit first to hide us." she said. After several seconds she added, "Okay, let's go."

It did not seem too difficult to sneak up on the go-gangers as they shot at each other from behind abandoned cars, crouching low and keeping other cars between themselves and the go-gangers. As they got closer John could see one with Godz colors manning a machinegun, letting loose an occasional burst of fire to keep the opposing Ghostriders hiding behind their cars. He stopped at the front wheel of a Ford Americar, crouching just beside the sedan for cover.

"Looks like he's the big one to take out." commented Wynter.

Using his Predator as a third eye, John propped the barrel up over the hood of a car to peek around. It was an odd sensation having that third eye, but at least he could get a look at the gang fight from the side through the Predator's smartgun system without exposing his head.

"I think I can get a shot." John said as he focused his vision through the Predator, its smartgun system giving John what he needed to see the gunner.

"Hang on." Wynter said. Suddenly everything got very quiet.

Wynter tapped John on the shoulder. When he looked at her, she mimed to him to shoot the machine gunner.

John dared to peek over the car's hood. As carefully as he could he drew a bead on the Godz member at the machinegun, and squeezed off a shot. There was no bang, no retort as he felt his Predator kick back with the shot, the shell casing flying as the pistol loaded the next round. The go-ganger at the machinegun dropped, and John thought he got him in the arm.

Another go-ganger was quick to jump into the gunner's place. He got one burst off before John shot at him as well. This one John managed to hit in the chest, and as the go-ganger spun and fell, John could see a bloody hole in the ganger's back where the bullet exited his body.

The Godz must have been crazy, John figured. Even though he was more cautious, another climbed up to try and man the machinegun. John ducked down when the ganger looked his way.

Wynter peeked up, and was quickly down again. John figured from her gesture of crossing two fingers over her eyes that they had not been spotted.

Peeking up again, John saw the gunner looking more their way while his buddies shot back at the Ghostriders. Deciding to take a different approach, he aimed for the machinegun itself, and when it looked like he had a good shot to try and shoot through the ammo box at its side, John fired.

It was strange to watch, but not hear, the ammo box itself explode in a blinding fireball. Reflexively John ducked back down again, turning to lean against the tire and look at Wynter. With pistols in his hands, he mimed and explosion.

Wynter peeked up, and quickly came back down again. She looked more pleased than surprised.

Then the noise came back, and John almost jumped to his feet in surprise. "Sorry." Wynter apologized. Still hiding behind the Americar, Wynter popped up just a little to wave for H.M. to drive up. John was first to hop in through the back door when H.M. slowed as he passed them.

"That's fuckin' insane of you!" yelled Griff as John sat down. "Mr. Johnson said to keep casualties down to a minimum!"

"It's hundreds of kilometers to Leadville." John said as he pulled out his backpack and started putting the Predator, Redline, and ammo back in. "And my gun ain't an accident for the job."

"Like you had a better idea, anyway." Wynter said as she sat down. The door behind them closed on its own.

"We could've waited 'til they ran out of ammo." Griff said.

"Check my van's rear camera, Griff." H.M. said. Rather than making Griff access his van, he opened up an ARO that all of them could see. With a thought he had a copy for himself to see more clearly.

"What is it?" Wynter asked, cocking an ear to try and hear something. Whatever it was, John thought he heard it too. A constant thumping sound high above and far behind them.

"Looks like a PuebSec helicopter." Griff said.

"A Northrup Wasp with a GE Vindicator." H.M. said as the image zoomed in on the helicopter. It was not pointed their way when the six-barreled minigun spun up and started firing.

"That doesn't sound good." John said.

"It isn't." H.M. said flatly.

"Still think it was a good idea to wait?" Wynter asked.

Griff said nothing.

"So, Cypher, what's different about that pistol?" Wynter asked. "You used different ones last night on those ghouls."

"Um, not mine and it's loaded with AP ammo." John said.

"Whadaya mean it's not yours?" Griff asked.

Shoving his backpack back under his chair, John said, "Remember the Dragon? The pistol and mag were his. Took it off him when we caught him."

"Ever used it before?" Griff asked.

"First time." John said, closing the ARO for the van's rear camera. "Now if you'll excuse me," he said harshly, "I got some floor plans to hack." Lying down on the bench, John let his mind slip into virtual reality.

John started by looking for the city hall or hall of records in Leadville. Finding nodes for both places, John opted to start with the hall of records node. Pulling his virtual robe tight around him, hood drawn, John logged in.

Expecting to see a lot of Amerindian themed iconography, John was surprised to see something more UCAS in appearance. Tan marble for the floor and walls, with white marble columns and windows for users to get ARO forms for what they needed. There were still plenty of Amerindian themed icons, though, giving the node blended feel of Western and Amerindian cultures. There were a few people already here, general users doing whatever it was they needed to in the morning hours.

John instead headed over to an obvious doorway where the staff would log into the secured part of the node. There he began the slow process of probing the firewall to try and find something he could use to slip in with. At least the firewall did not feel as hard as what he had to break through in Winterville two weeks ago. After a few hours he found something, and with a tug of resonance to hide him he pushed his way through.

The inside looked like what John expected, based on the outside, with a few desks and no cubicle walls. A few of these desks were occupied with user icons, people doing whatever mundane things they needed to do in their work for the city of Leadville.

There was also a passageway back to where John figured was where the records were kept. With no apparent alert to his break in, John carefully headed back, deeper into the node.

After poking around for a little bit he found the blueprints to their target lodge. He copied those along with blueprints for other lodges in the relatively nearby area just in case they might be needed, sending the data to his commlink. He then brought up an ARO for the access logs and removed the trace evidence that the files had even been accessed, then any other bits of data he may have created by being in the node.

As an afterthought John felt like he should wipe away whatever traces of resonance he created before logging off.

"Where are we?" John asked, sitting up. The seat felt quite comfortable despite having been lying motionless on a bench for a few hours.

"Well into the PCC now." Wynter said, "Pulling into a stop at… What's the place called?"

"Frisco." H.M. said.

"We hit a snow storm?" John asked, seeing windshield wipers pushing aside fat white flakes of snow.

"It's why we're stopping." Griff said.

"Got a weather alert that the passes into Leadville are closed." Wynter said, "So now we've gotta try and figure what we're gonna do from here."

H.M. was already pulling off of I-70 as Wynter spoke. Not far from there was a Nacho Mama, and he pulled into a parking space that was almost large enough for his van. "Snow's why we're not already at Copper Mountain."

"Anything in particular you want?" Wynter asked.

"Couple burritos and a fruit juice." John said.

He had gotten a better look through the windshield now that the van was stopped, but the amount of snow that had fallen was quite apparent when Wynter left through the van's back door. If it had not been for the Great Ghost Dance, or the awakening in general, this much snowfall in the middle of June would have been freakish to say the least. As it was, it was more of an inconvenience.

"So, you got the stuff?" Griff asked.

"Blueprints for the target lodge, and some extras." John said, shoving aside a new text from Hunter, "And other stuff I looked up last night, too."

"You think we need all that?" Griff asked.

"Never know."

They sat there in silence for a few minutes. After a while John grew bored with the waiting and opened up an ARO to first look up some weather reports. All of them did not look good. When that did not last he looked up a simple matrix game site. He was deep into his fifth game of 3D Pac Man when Wynter returned.

"So, what's the game plan?" Wynter asked as she handed out everyone's food.

"We're waiting for you." Griff said as he peeled open the wrapper of a fat burrito of his own.

With a thought John pulled up his notes about everyone. He opened up a public ARO with the holopic of Wapasha Blackwolf.

"Can you set it so we all can see?" Griff asked.

"What? It's a public icon." John said.

"I can't do AR." Wynter said, "Makes me nauseous."

"Weird." John said as he tried to think of something.

"H.M., why not let the kid use your holo projector." Griff said.

H.M. groaned. It looked like he did not like the idea, but a new device soon became visible to John. With a quick check of the new device John found he could upload images and manipulate them. So he moved the ARO to the holo projector instead.

To John it looked weird having the holographic image floating in mid air. He set it to spin slowly so everyone would be able to see it at all angles.

"So that's Wapasha Blackwolf?" Griff asked.

"And it looks like he's with Mr. Johnson." Wynter added.

"Alesandro Ibáñez." John corrected. Then reading from his notes, "Wapasha Blackwolf's the Chairman Of The Board and Chief Financial Officer for Xeverus Cosmetics Research, Inc."

"Right, you mentioned that last night." Griff said.

"And who's that?" Wynter asked.

"Makeup sales for Evo." John said.

"And what's Mr. Johnson's relation in all this?" Wynter asked.

"Does it matter?" Griff asked back.

"Maybe." H.M. said.

"Ibáñez married Margaret Xeverus, the company's founder. EarthFirst! killed her, leaving Ibáñez the shares with no voting rights, and made Blackwolf Chairman." John said.

"So where's that leave Mr. John, er, Ibáñez after Blackwolf's dead?" Wynter asked.

"Dunno." John said.

"Does it matter?" Griff asked.

"Maybe not." Wynter said.

John figured Alesandro would get control over XCR, not like he really cared if he was right or not.

"This kind of work, it doesn't really matter the why." Wynter said, "We're getting paid to do a job that happens to involve the head of a good sized corporation. Let the other guys figure the why."

"So how're we gonna do this?" John asked.

"Got a drug that'll do the trick." Wynter said, "Just gotta get close enough to get him to breathe it in. Altitude should help take care of the rest."

"Altitude?" asked John.

"We're at twenty-seven hundred, sixty-one meters, give or take a meter." H.M. said, "Leadville's at three thousand, ninety-four meters. Lodge's higher up."

John now wished he had done more research into this.

"Air's gonna get plenty thin the further we go on." Griff said.

"Stuff I've got'll make it hard for you to breath in the best of circumstances. Up here, should be fatal." Wynter added.

"And accidental?" John asked.

"Stuff breaks down quick, or so I'm told." Wynter said. "Best, but hardest, way I see it is to sneak into the lodge at night and dose him while he's sleeping. At least we don't all have to go in."

"If Cypher's as good as he claims, he can stay in the van to hack the security." Griff said, "And we'll want H.M. at the wheel so we can make our getaway. If the place's warded…"

"Which it probably is." interjected Wynter.

"…then Wynter will have to come in with me to help cover my ass." Griff finished. "Right then. So, if we can see the blueprints?"

With a thought John swapped out the spinning holopic of Alesandro and Wapasha for a wireframe copy of the blueprints of the lodge. Like the holopic, the floating holographic image of the lodge looked and felt unnatural to John. The walls were outlined in black, with electrical wiring in yellow and plumbing in blue.

"One full basement level, main floor, and I guess bedrooms upstairs." Griff said.

"Looks like the master bedroom's here." John said, the three floors separating at his command, and a room at the back of the lodge flickered.

"Security probably takes the other bedrooms." Griff said, "Spider's in the basement so he's out of everyone's way. Open stairway all the way up, and it doesn't look like the doors have any serious locks. We won't be able to isolate anyone that way. And nothing about security, either."

"I'd expect the whole place is warded." Wynter said, "Not like wards have to be marked since they don't last forever. Definitely better to go in with instead of projecting."

"Getting in will be the hard part." Griff said.

"Maybe not if the kid can hack the system." Wynter said.

"I can hack it." John said.

"Yeah? What if security's independent of everything? Wired and not wireless?" Griff challenged.

Sighing, John leaned over and pulled out his backpack, saying "Thought you were done with the dumbass questions." Rummaging around a little, he pulled out his modified Yokujin drone. "Meet Laserbeak." John said, "It's got the gear from a micro tapper drone built into it. If there's a security camera out there, their node's mine."

"Yeah, and it'll get spotted easy." Griff said.

Smiling, John ordered Laserbeak to fly up to the holo projector in the ceiling and hide. The little drone zipped up to the projector, performing a neat flip, and latched onto the ceiling. Then its chameleon coating activated, changing its colors to match the van's ceiling.

"Won't be the first time I plugged into a camera and had their security node because it wasn't wireless." John said.

"Okay then." Griff said.

With a thought John called Laserbeak back. "Hope you don't drive off without me being able to get it back." he said as he pocketed the tiny drone, "Don't wanna blow this paycheck getting a new one."

"If all goes well, it'll be fine." Griff said.

"What about us? The thin air?" John asked.

"I've got some respirator masks stowed in the back in case someone suffers from altitude sickness." H.M. said. "Small air supply, but it should help."

"Just take one if you start feeling tired but not sleepy." Wynter said, "Now what about the passes being closed?"

"We press on, or we take the long way around on two-eighty-five." H.M. said.

"How long is long?" asked Griff.

"'Bout one seventy-five." H.M. said. "Over two hours when it's good weather."

"And the original route?" Wynter asked.

"'Bout fifty. Less than an hour." H.M. answered.

"But still when it's good conditions." Griff said.

"And no guarantee the pass is open down there by the time we get there." Wynter said.

"Suggestions?" Griff asked.

"Shortest path." Wynter said.

"Me too." John added.

"Plows are supposedly working. Might be open when we get there." H.M. told them.

"Alright then. Short way it is." Griff said.

H.M. was slow and careful as he drove out of the Nacho Mama parking lot and back onto I-70. Travel was slow going at best with the amount of snow that was coming down, and the looming mountain to their left did not help matters much, with the clouds so low it was impossible to see the peaks.

"Weather looks like shit." Griff commented as a carved cliff face came into view on their right. Occasionally a gust of wind would pick up and buffet the van head on, bringing with it a brief white out of snow.

"Glad your sensors are cutting edge." Griff said.

H.M. only nodded.

The snow did not let up, and actually got worse as they headed south. It felt like it was taking forever to even reach Copper Mountain, and just when John was about to ask that age old question of, "Are we there yet?" did H.M. pull off of I-70.

They were just coming down the south side of the overpass over I-70 when H.M. cussed, "Shit. Road's still closed up ahead."

"What?" Wynter asked.

"Got a traffic alert popup. Ninety-one's closed off up ahead." H.M. told them.

"Pull off to the right up here." Griff said, "There's some restaurants we can stop at to plan things out."

H.M. followed Griff's directions, pulling onto what an ARO said was Copper Road. It was a divided road and a little twisty. In summer weather John thought it might make for a fun bit of fast driving, but in the cold and snow it looked like it was more treacherous.

"I think I see a good spot." H.M. said as he followed a large truck into the parking lot of a restaurant called the Salsa Mountain Cantina. Once H.M. had parked his van John noticed that it was actually a snowplow.

"How's this a good spot?" Griff asked.

"That's a snowplow I followed in." H.M. said, pointing at the snowplow.

"And what're you thinking?" Wynter asked.

"That maybe you'd come up with something." H.M. said.

"Do we always have to do the thinking?" Griff asked.

"You're the one with the brain booster." Wynter added, "Kid's smart, but I'd say that booster puts you up past him in smarts."

John decided to keep his mouth shut at the insult.

"Well, we gotta get past that gate somehow." H.M. said, crossing all four of his arms across his chest, "My van certainly can't do it on its own."

"I think stealing a plow's out of the question." Griff said.

Wynter sighed. "Wrong line of work if you're gonna get squeamish about that now." she said.

"Well, we could wait for the plows to get around to clearing the pass on ninety-one." Griff said.

"Like it was a good idea to just sit and wait for those go-gangers to run out of ammo?" Wynter countered, "If it weren't for me and the kid we might've ended up in jail back in Denver! There's gotta be another way."

John half paid attention to the others as he brought up a private ARO to do a search on the PCC's snowplowing of the area. He found that not too far from them was a facility where the area's fleet of snowplows were kept and maintained as well as who handled their scheduling. Buttoning up his coat, and wishing he had worn his cold weather coat he had gotten two weeks ago, John made for the back door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Wynter asked.

"Out." John said, "Call me if you guys make up your minds." With a thought he forwarded his commcode to Wynter's commlink.

H.M. made no effort to stop John, though he figured H.M. would have had to physically restrain him to keep him in the van.

The outside did not quite feel as cold as John expected as he walked along a poorly cleared sidewalk. His goggles muted what was probably blindingly white light as the sun's rays were diffused through the clouds.

His legs were feeling a little sore and tired by the time he reached a roundabout, AROs indicating where Copper Road and Copper Circle went. Taking extra care he made his way along the snow covered crosswalk, but likely because of the sudden snow there was no traffic about. The cold air was now starting to sting at his nose and lips with each breath, though the crisp clean smell of it alone almost made it bearable. A quick check by the GPS of his commlink put him at an elevation of almost three thousand meters. Soon he was able to see the storage yard, two buildings with half a dozen large garage doors to each.

Judging by the signals that John could feel and hear there were several people working at the moment. Finding a place where he thought he could discreetly stand, John focused his mind towards their network without going into virtual reality.

Breaking through the firewall was a little tough, but when John got in he did not notice any alerts or security related activity going on. Right away he pulled on the resonance to thread a disarming form to neutralize the detection software running in the node. Once that was completed he looked for a schedule of the plows and a list of what was currently still there.

Among the three working plows that were still in the yard, John also saw that the list included everyone's personal vehicles as well. When John physically saw what looked like a GM-Nissan Doberman drone walking along the perimeter he started looking into what security they had. It looked like it had an assault rifle mounted on its back.

John found the node's sculpting and security access to be rather poor, as their security was tied in with everything else. In addition to finding that he could access the security cameras around the yard, he also could see through the sensors of two security drones that patrolled the yard.

Seeing that the schedule was a read open file, and growing just a little pissed off since the PCC was not using all of their snowplows, John decided to make a small alteration. One of the snowplows was virtually wasting space and time in doing nothing, and with a driver there doing the same. With a thought John brought up a new ARO to access the node for the PCC's Department of Highways. With the same brute force technique he busted through their firewall as he cupped his hands to his mouth, breathing into them to warm them before putting them back into his pockets.

After finding no alert in the Department Of Highways node, John rethreaded his disarming form like before and used it to neutralize its detection software as well. From there he looked for the scheduling for their snowplows. Once he found it he altered the schedule to put a snowplow to work in five minutes to clear out highway ninety-one all the way down to Leadville, and to take the long way back up through Minturn before going back on I-70 back to Copper Mountain.

Looking up, John saw one of the patrol drones looking at him. Focusing back to the AROs he saw that on its own it had stopped to query about him and was waiting for directions. Seeing a security rigger was on duty but doing nothing, John analyzed his icon for an access ID, then posing as the security rigger told both drones that he was not a threat.

The drone just stood there instead of moving on to its regular patrol. Figuring something went wrong, John tried again. He breathed a sigh of relief when the drone finally moved on, and the security rigger's icon was still doing nothing. Having another idea, John decided to hack into the drone . Its firewall crumbled within seconds, and after a quick look John found the login information of the security rigger. Applying this information to the other drone, John was rewarded with immediate access. He then turned around and used this information to re-login to the first drone.

It was not long until the work crews had the snowplow up and running. Slowly the snowplow pulled out of its garage stall, its diesel engine rumbling. John got himself another idea, and found he had to work quickly if he wanted to pull it off.

The rest of the workers seemed content to remain inside their warm garages, and no one seemed to notice when John told the drones to follow the snowplow as it rumbled through the gate. The gate itself closed behind the drones.

Checking the security system, John noticed no activity from the rigger's icon at all. Curious, John looked up the rigger's location, which turned out to be in the office. From inside the node, John created a set of records saying the drones had returned to their stalls for charging and maintenance.

The snowplow rumbled past as John edited out the last traces of his presence in the node, turning to walk back towards the Salsa Mountain Cantina. When the drones passed him, John gave them orders to escort him. He also set them both to hidden mode as they walked.

Dutifully the two drones fell in step with John as he crossed Copper Road back to the other side. Along the way, John looked up some details about these two drones as they did not look like the other GM-Nissan Doberman drones that he had.

John had his answers by the time he was walking into the Salsa Mountain Cantina's parking lot. They were a similar model to the GM-Nissan Doberman, called the Soldat made by a company called ATT. He figured he would reprogram them once they were in the back of H.M.'s van where it was warm. He then went to cleaning up the evidence of his activities in both the Department Of Highways and the snowplow garage nodes before logging off of them. He also did some quick research to figure out what they were armed with, and the best match came to the AK-97, the modern version of the AK-47 from a century before with the same reputation of reliability. It was also perfectly legal for John to have one, so he figured it would not be a problem getting them into Denver.

The van's back door was still not locked when John opened it. As quickly as his cold and sore legs would allow he climbed in.

"Where the hell have you been?" demanded Griff.

"Out." John said, holding the door open as he ordered the Soldats into the van. With the grace of a large dog the two scrambled inside.

"Where the fuck did you get those?"

"Somewhere." John answered as he sat down in his spot.

"You gonna give a straight answer?" Griff asked, "You sound like a fucking elf."

"You gonna grow a spine and let your balls drop?" John snapped back. He ordered the drones to keep their safeties on before creating new administrator accounts within their operating systems at the same time.

"Boys! Boys!" Wynter cried, "At least the kid's okay."

Griff only grunted. "You have any idea how much trouble we can get into for those things?" he asked. "Not like you can just walk into a store around here and buy one."

"You're right." John said as he logged off of both drones and used his new accounts to log in with. First thing he did was delete the rigger's accounts, as well as any others the drones happened to have.

"And what're you gonna do about it?" Griff asked.

"I'm doing it." John said as he worked within their nodes.

"Well?" asked Wynter in a much more gentle tone.

John said nothing as he began rewriting their access IDs to something completely different. Once those changes took effect, John logged in with his accounts once again. He smiled as both drones accepted him as their owner and master.

"I deleted all accounts and made my own." John said, "And I changed their identifications. This ain't the first time I've taken drones like this."

"Kick 'em out." H.M. said flatly.

"Check your road report." John countered as he walked over to his seat and sat down, "I think that plow I sent on ninety-one's already past that gate you said was closed." Accessing the logs of both drones, John skimmed the data for any and all details about any RFID tags they might have.

H.M. was silent as he apparently did his own matrix search to check the road report. "I still don't want them in here." he said.

"Fuck it. You know how much I've done so far?" John angrily asked. "I got us the blueprints so you wouldn't be going into the lodge blind," he pointed to Griff, "I helped get us past those gangers that'd've put holes in your van," he pointed to H.M., "and I hacked the schedules for the snowplows so they'd get off their fucking asses and get to ninety-one right away instead of tomorrow-fucking-morning! I've done the most here, so I think you guys oughta cut me some slack!" Glaring at Griff from behind his goggles, John added, "Especially with how much shit you've given me."

"Wynter helped you with the gangers, don't forget." Griff said.

"I covered him, nothing more. He did all the shooting." Wynter said, "Which is still more than what you did. And you have ridden him kinda hard."

"Yeah, so?"

"At least you ain't got the chrome." John said, "Dumbass razorboy tried the same shit. Hacked his eye a lot to fuck with him for it."

"Eye?" Griff asked.

"Yeah. Band goes 'round his head." John told him, circling a finger around his head at eye level. "More cyber than brains. Beefier than you, too."

Gritting his teeth, it looked like Griff was about to jump out of his seat. Seeing the ork's gaze switch between John, and then the two Soldats, he apparently thought it better not to.

It was a good idea, as John could see through the Soldat's cameras that they were targeting Griff.

"H.M., is ninety-one really getting plowed?" Wynter asked.

"Report says they've sent a plow out about ten minutes ago to clear it." H.M. told them.

"Then why not cut him some slack?" Wynter asked. "He certainly's done a shit load for us so far, and he's still got more to do."

H.M. did not look happy. In fact, John could not quite tell what H.M. was feeling now, or ever. Whatever was going through his mind, something inside must have figured John and Wynter were right. Without a word, H.M. started up his van.

"You seriously siding with them?" Griff asked.

"Shut up." H.M. said as he backed his van out of the parking space to turn out onto the road.

Griff was fuming, that much was clear to John. When John looked over to Wynter, she just gave him a sly wink and a hint of a smile.

As H.M. drove back onto highway ninety-one, John focused more on wiping the data off of what RFID tags he found through the two Soldat drones and their mounted assault rifles. Cleaning the tag's did not take very long.

The rest of the slow trip was spent in silence, save for the scrape of wiper blades. John spent some of this time forging some access log records in the Soldats, along with deleting the rest. He took his time doing this, though it only lasted for half of the trip down to Leadville.

"Just had a thought." Griff said the mountains began to recede behind them and Leadville came into view, "How're you gonna get those drones through the border on the way back?"

"Forged a purchase record on the drones and my 'link." John said, "And I got really good licenses to cover them and their guns. 'Sides, I already got three GM Doberman drones. If I'd known we'd have ghouls to deal with I'd've brought 'em along."

"You've got three Dobermans already?" Wynter asked.

"What're they armed with, squirt guns?" Griff asked with a grin.

Wynter groaned.

John sighed, saying, "Ares light machineguns and Antioch grenade launchers."

"Where do we go from here?" H.M. asked.

After a few seconds Griff said, "Straight onto twenty-four through town. South of town there should be a left onto Elm, then a right onto Toledo."

H.M. merely nodded, driving straight as highway ninety-one ended, merging into highway twenty-four.

Leadville gave John the impression of the small hick town you would find in the middle of nowhere, fifty kilometers off any main road. The place was relatively flat, with the tallest buildings being only two stories high. Even here the snow was still coming down.

They had just passed the only third story building John had seen, a brick building called the something Opera House. He missed part of the name, but not the flashing red and blue lights that appeared behind them.

"Oh shit." Griff cussed. "You did it now." He looked straight at John.

"Hell I did!" John said loudly, "There ain't been no sweeps to pick 'em up!"

"Switch seats with me." Wynter said, jumping up to stand next to Griff.

"Why?" Griff asked.

"Because you can't fast talk your way past a deaf troll."

Grumbling, Griff got up and took Wynter's seat.

"Cypher, gimme a name from one of those other lodges," Wynter said, "don't matter who's. Send it to my 'link."

John brought up the data he had gotten earlier, picked a name that was close to the lodge they had to go to, but further out of town, and the forwarded name and address info to Wynter's commlink. He was just in time too, as H.M. pulled into a parking lot to pull over. It was evident that the police were interested in them.

H.M.'s window slid down, and John could now just see the head and shoulders of an Amerindian in a khaki uniform. "Evenin' folks." the Amerindian said, "What brings you into town?"

"Just passing through, officer. Delivery for the Morgans, up CR-2." Wynter answered.

John tugged at the resonance, bolstering a complex form before starting to make up an invoice file.

"What'd they order?" the officer asked.

"Couple of security drones." Wynter said, glancing down at her commlink.

It was quick, but John thought he had it finished. Impersonating Wynter's commlink, John sent a copy of the fake invoice to the officer's commlink, and a text to Wynter's commlink saying "Invoice Copy Sent". He hoped Wynter would catch on quick.

"Ah, there." Wynter said.

"Seems to look alright." the officer said. "Kinda a strange truck, though. No logo or anything."

"New truck. Haven't gotten it painted yet." H.M. said.

"Right then." the officer said thoughtfully, "Take it easy. Country Road Two might be a bit treacherous with all the snow we've gotten today."

"Have a good evening!" Wynter called out as H.M.'s window slid back up again.

H.M. waited until the flashing lights were turned off before pulling back out onto the road again.

After a while, when it looked like the cops were not still following, Wynter said, "Quick thinking with whatever you gave that cop."

"Surprised you didn't shoot 'em, or try and steal their car. Just what'd you give 'em, anyway?" Griff asked.

"A fake invoice for a purchase of two ATT Soldats with AK-97s." John said. "'Sides, Mr. Johnson didn't want it messy here."

"Gangers on the highway in Denver don't count." H.M. added flatly.

Wynter chuckled.

"What's so funny?" Griff asked.

"Kid steals some drones, and they helped us get past the cops here." Wynter said, still chuckling. "And you guys wanted to throw them out."

Even John had to smile at that.

"Bet you just came up with the delivery line at the last second." Griff said.

"Almost. I'd say it's Cypher who came up with that invoice at the last second." Wynter said.

"Just playin' along." John added.

"So what're we gonna tell 'em when they notice we're not back right away?" Griff asked, "He's sure to notice we still have the drones."

"Assuming he even stops us, or even looks in the back." Wynter said.

"We can say we got stuck." H.M. offered as he turned off of the highway. "About five kilometers to go, and it's not going to be an easy road."

H.M. was quite right as they were soon driving what John would have said was a snow packed dirt road straight into a valley. After a while John heard a noise that sounded like a set of doors opening in the roof of the van, along with something that sounded like a ka-chunk.

"Sent the shinobi ahead." H.M. said.

Surprisingly, despite it looking like they were out in the middle of nowhere, John still had a strong connection to the matrix. He opened up an ARO to do a search on 'shinobi', and figuring it was a drone focused his search on that. In less than a minute he had some of the public details on an aerial electronic warfare drone called a Shinobi, made by Mitsuhama Computer Technologies.

John was about to ask about the drone when Wynter said, "He's got it refitted like a spy drone. Sensors and software and the works."

They continued to climb even higher, and more than once did John's ears pop as the air grew thinner.

"Can ya pass me one of those masks?" Wynter asked.

"Yeah." Griff said.

John yawned.

"And get one for the kid, too." Wynter said.

"I'm not tired." John told them.

"Better safe than sorry." Wynter said.

John did not argue as he swiped the respirator mask from Griff's hand. It looked like a simple gasmask, black in color, and with an adjustable elastic band that needed cinching up to fit John's head. Once it was sealed around his nose and mouth it released a cool but refreshing puff of oxygen.

"We can't go further." H.M. said, bringing his van to a stop. "Security might detect us."

"The shinobi picked something up?" Griff asked.

"Yes."

"Anything we might be able to use?" John asked.

"An interface at the gate ahead. About three hundred meters."

John pulled out Laserbeak, waking it with a gentle mental prod. "If you could crack open a window, please?" he asked as he silently gave the drone instructions.

Laserbeak flew straight for Wynter's window as soon as it was wide enough, its chameleon coating adopting a pattern to hide against the snow. Watching through an ARO, John guided the tiny drone, giving it an occasional prompt where to fly as its covert operations autosoft told it how to stealthfully approach the gate.

After what felt like forever, but was really only a few minutes, Laserbeak reached a sophisticated and expensive looking gate connected to a matching tall fence. John prompted it to a control box, telling the tiny drone to interface with it. Through the ARO he watched as it zipped around it like a housefly about a person's head before finally settling down at a spot where it apparently could still hide as well. In a few seconds it had burned a tiny hole into the control box and made a link with the electronics inside.

"How long's this gonna take?" Griff asked.

"You in a rush?" John asked as he lied down on the bench seat. "Two, three hours." Before Griff could say anything John's mind was in the depths of virtual reality, leaving a line open for an audio connection to his commlink so he could talk with the others.

The sculpting of Laserbeak's node was bland on the inside, looking a lot like a spaceship set from the century old Star Trek program, with lots of flat paneling and lack of decoration. There was a portal, which was programmed to take the user through the tapper equipment and into the next device. John began the slow process of probing the firewall to find a subtle breach to exploit. After a few hours of gentle prodding, and checking to make sure there were no data traps and the sort, John slipped his way inside.

Inside the control box was equally dull, a bland room almost devoid of any decoration of any kind. There was, however, an obvious portal to a connecting node besides the hidden one John had just passed through. A quick check told John that the control box believed everything was normal, and in digging up its access log found that it had only recorded his logging in and nothing else. In the real world he thought he was grinning as he erased this trace evidence right away.

"I'm in the first node. Everything's fine." John told them.

"Just over two hours." he heard Griff say.

Passing through the next portal felt different than usual, though John could not quite figure if it was the lack of a firewall or what for the split second it took to render then next node. This node looked quite different, and apparently a lot of effort had gone into making it look like the inside of a medicine lodge, though there were several modern tweaks that apparently the designer could not figure a way around. The node appeared twice as long as it was wide, with a smokeless fire burning at the center, along with several other much smaller fires lit around the lodge. Masks made to look like various animals, like ravens, wolves, and bears, decorated several support poles.

John was not the only user icon in here, either. Likely the lodge's security rigger, or spider. The icon looking much like a Pueblo medicine man, stood next to one of the smaller fires. He wore a hood that looked like a white bird, with feathers decorating his arms to give the illusion they were wings, a necklace of turquoise, and other similar tribal garb. He waved a hand by the small flame, bringing forth a modern ARO that John could not see clearly.

After a few seconds the white bird medicine man dismissed the ARO and became idle. After waiting about half a minute John figured that whoever's icon that was had left himself logged in. Carefully he moved to another small fire, and with a pass of his virtual hand was able to call up an ARO that detailed the lighting of the lodge, inside and out. With a wave of his hand the ARO closed.

Turning, John knelt by the central fire. With his left hand held out, fingers spread wide, John threaded a disarming form. Minute tendrils of data, looking like a fine cloud of spider web, flowed from his fingertips into the fire. In seconds the running detection software had been neutralized.

Changing his posture, John sat himself cross legged by the main fire. With a few thoughts he started accessing everything he could within the node, starting with the security systems.

To John alone, like it was like what a drug induced vision would look like, an illusion of the lodge and its grounds appeared floating within the fire. He could see all of the security measures taken, which included motion sensors along the perimeter and pressure sensors along the driveway. On top of all of this these sensors were hard wired to the lodge itself. At least that explained to John the odd sensation when he passed into the lodge's central node. The only wireless activity was for non-security related activity.

Then it hit John when he saw how complete the coverage of the motion sensors was. Checking their logs, he saw that several of them had caught Laserbeak's approach and reported it. It also looked like the spider had checked the logs, with notes saying they had detected something like a small bird and dismissed it. Checking the history John found a few other such reports at different places along the perimeter, all quite similar to what Laserbeak had caused. He decided to leave the report in place.

"Find anything, kid?" Griff asked.

"Kick ass motion sensors all around the lodge, pressure pads running the driveway, and a few gun drones on the lodge's roof." John reported back. He decided not to mention anything about a spy-fly drone that he found, sending it off to patrol the far side of the perimeter instead.

"Just how good are they?" Griff asked.

"Five of 'em picked up Laserbeak on the way in. Spider dismissed it as a tiny animal."

"Holy shit!" Griff cussed loudly.

"Are they on alert?" Wynter asked.

John tapped himself into the WiFi of the lodge's node. There was not a whole lot of activity compared to what John expected your suburban family might have. The last hour's worth of activity also showed that most everyone had been in the same place. Finding an obscene number of wired security cameras, John flipped through all of them before answering.

"Spider's a dwarf and in the basement, eating. One security guard, an ork, is in the living room. Two more're upstairs, one ork, one human. Target's in the kitchen with two human babes having dinner."

"Just how secured are they?" Griff asked.

"Looks like they ain't expecting shit." John said, "There's cameras everywhere, and I fuckin' mean everywhere. Bet the spider's a pervert."

"What do you mean?" Wynter asked.

"There's two cameras in each bathroom, and you ain't got any privacy." John told her.

"Gross."

"How good are you at multitasking?" Griff asked.

"I can juggle a few nodes. Why?"

Back at his body, John felt a change in H.M.'s van.

"Managed to talk H.M. into giving you access to his drone." Griff said, "Just to give you some eyes on the outside, nothing more."

"Okay." John said, sending himself through H.M.'s van to the aerial drone that had been launched. True to their word, John had access to the drone's full sensor package, and some limited control on its camera. John could turn the camera around to look where he wanted to, as well as changing its various filters.

"Oh, H.M. also wants me to tell you that if you hack his drone or do anything that causes it to wreck, you're walking home without the Soldats."

"I ain't gonna fuck with his shit." John snipped back. He was confident that H.M. would not have even known it if he actually did hack the drone, the van, or anything else. That alone made John feel like he did not have to unless it was absolutely necessary.

"We're going in radio silence." Griff said, "Just give us the word when it's safe to start."

"Don't forget your tags." John said as he started with the security gate itself, editing it so it was unlocked but would still say it was locked no matter what. He also disabled the sensors within it that would report if the gate was opened, changing its software to say the gate was closed.

Next came the motion sensors. Their sensor feeds were recorded, so John took a ten minute segment of recording from all of the sensors that could even potentially detect the gate and fed it in as a looping playback, tweaked so the timestamp was current.

The pressure sensors were next, and they received the same treatment as the motion sensors.

Last were the cameras, and for John the trickier part of blinding the lodge's security. Figuring Wapasha Blackwolf would not be going to the upstairs or basement levels, John focused on the cameras that could detect anything on the main level, inside or out. He collected their numerous AROs, pushing aside all of the other cameras.

Holding up his right hand, John focused on connecting to each of the cameras. The shape of his hand dissolved completely, and extending from his wrist was a mechadendrite that connected to each camera. The amount of data was overwhelming, and John found it hard to juggle so many cameras at once.

John held his breath when he saw the medicine man move again. The spider went to one of the smaller flames, bringing up an ARO report on the perimeter's motion sensors. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, despite being in VR, all of a sudden quite worried that his editing could be found out.

The medicine man closed the ARO and went to another small flame, bringing up a report for the exterior cameras. Again John held his breath, waiting to see if he was going to be found out.

Apparently finding nothing wrong, the medicine man's icon went back to where it had been and became idle once more. John breathed a sigh of relief.

"Anything wrong?" Wynter asked.

"Spider stirred. I'm fine." John said as he focused his efforts to the cameras once more.

Ultimately John loosed some of the cameras, focusing on those that covered the garage, the adjoining utility room, the kitchen, and master bedroom. He altered the man door at the side in the same way he did the main gate.

Using the spider's credentials, John slipped himself into the gun drone that was perched on the far corner of the garage roof. It actually did not have much in the way of sensors, relying on reports from the security node and a camera of its own. So John connected himself to its camera as well, and changed its programming just a little to report that its mounted machinegun had its safety off when it was really locked on.

Through the array of security cameras, John watched as Wapasha left the kitchen with his two female companions and headed into the master bedroom.

Like what John had done last week, when Hunter and Mina had snuck into the restaurant, John pulled a copy of the camera feeds, with one showing what they really saw and the other behind it being edited to remove any evidence of Griff or Wynter as they made their way through the lodge. The amount of data was nearly overwhelming still, and John knew he had to be on top of his game to handle so many cameras at once.

"Target's in the bedroom. Gate's open, no cameras. Best route's through the garage at the side. The door'll be open. Everything on the way's blind." John announced.

"We're out." Griff said.

It was almost literally painful minutes before H.M.'s drone spotted Griff and Wynter as they slipped through the gate. The zoom and lowlight filter on the camera was great, and he could clearly see their masked faces as they ran for the lodge in the near black darkness of the late evening.

John wondered if watching them was like how it was for SINners to watch a marathon on the trid. If it was not for some excellent software H.M. had installed in the shinobi drone, John would have lost track of them as something erased their tracks as they went. Through the shinobi, John was able to follow them until they entered through the garage door at the side.

Just as the garage door opened, John poured his full focus into the security cameras to ensure that nothing out of the ordinary showed up in their recordings. He watched through the AROs of the unaltered video as Wynter and Griff paused for several heart pounding seconds before they both just disappeared. John guessed Wynter had used a spell, and figured he was right when both of the utility room doors silently opened and closed. A little bit later the master bedroom door slowly and silently opened, then closed.

So far, so good. And Wynter's invisibility spell was a lot better than Mina's. Mina's spell did not work through technology, and John would have been able to see her regardless through the lodge's security cameras. He forced these thoughts aside so he could focus at his task at hand.

The security guard in the living room stretched as the program he watched went into a commercial break. John gritted his teeth as he watched the ork get up and walk to the kitchen and through it to the bathroom at the far side. This put him right in Griff's and Wynter's path.

A few minutes later the security guard came back out. He stopped at the refrigerator to grab a bottle of something before heading back to the living room.

The bedroom door opened again, and was quicker to silently close. The bodyguard made no notice as the utility room door opened and closed again. Wynter and Griff appeared to John's unedited camera view before they snuck back out the same door they had came into.

John went right back to work as he carefully pulled his influence away from the security cameras, making sure each one kept acting like it had the whole time and diffusing any trace of resonance that he might have left. He disconnected from each camera as he finished his work, a mechadendrite cable retracting from its icon and back into his hand. With the last one done, the resulting mass at the end of his arm morphed back into a regular looking hand once more. By the time he was done with the cameras, giving their recordings a final polishing, Wynter and Griff were already more than half way to the front gate. Like on their way in, their snow trails were wiped clean by some unseen force.

The pressure pads and motion sensors were not touched on until the gate was closed, with Wynter and Griff on the outside. H.M. had to have been watching as well, as John immediately lost his access to the shinobi. Not like he needed it now anyway.

John found it was a lot easier to revert the outdoor sensor's programming back to the way it was than it had been to alter the video recording.

"Okay, we're back." John heard Griff say just as he had finished cleaning up his influence on the pressure pads.

"Gimme some time to finish up." John said as he began to undo his alterations to the motion sensors.

With everything looking like how he had found it, John gave the node one last sweeping pass to diffuse his resonance traces from his activities. Confident that everything was clean, John compiled a simple data sprite, a tiny human skull without a jawbone and a single mechadendrite cable trailing out where the spinal cord might be. Silently he showed it the access log, giving it the one shot credentials to wipe away his disconnection from the node.

Tossing the little data sprite into the central fire, John jumped for the portal back to the security gate, and for Laserbeak. Feeling the last trace disappear, and the data sprite decompile itself after performing its task, John ordered Laserbeak to disconnect itself from the gate and return to him as quickly as possible.

Laserbeak sent an error as one of its turbofans refused to spin up to speed.

"Shit." John cussed.

"What is it?" Wynter asked.

"Laserbeak's sayin' it can't fly. Something's wrong with a fan." John said. "Gimme a minute."

John took a new approach to Laserbeak, jumping wholly into the drone itself and almost literally becoming the drone. He hoped he could figure out what was going on as he really had no idea how to properly fly as a little yokujin drone.

It was an odd sensation having ten limbs, six little legs and four wings. At least, that's kind of how it felt to John.

Individually John tested the turbofans, spinning each one both directions before testing the next. He found the number one turbofan, the forward left wing, would not spin in either direction. He cranked his vision up, moving the wing forward so he could try and get a look at it. Seeing nothing wrong with it, John resorted to banging the wing against the side of the gate's control box. He hoped he was in a motion sensor blind spot, or that the movement was too subtle to pick up.

Whatever had been wrong with it, a few smacks seemed to straighten things out and the turbofan was able to spin freely once more. With one last check, John slid back to let Laserbeak fly itself. This time it did without any problems, favoring speed over stealth as it buzzed close to the snow covered ground.

"Can you catch a window, please?" John asked as he brought himself back to the real world. With one ARO still open, showing what Laserbeak saw ahead of itself, John watched as it barely slowed down in time to fly through the side window, buzzing close to Griff's face. It landed smoothly on John's outstretched hand.

"Everything good?" Wynter asked, sitting on the other bench seat across from John.

"Like I was never there. You sure he's dead?" John asked.

"Watched his aura disappear." Wynter told him. With what John knew about auras, this was a sure sign that Wapasha had died.

H.M. was already driving back towards Leadville as they spoke, wasting no time to leave once Laserbeak had gotten into the van. John pocketed the minidrone, hoping he would remember to check the one turbofan once he got home.

"Go ahead and get some sleep." Wynter told him, "I think we'll be okay from here."

Leaving the respirator mask on, John tried to relax as H.M. continued to drive down the mountain. It was not until they were driving up on highway twenty-four through Leadville when he felt relaxed, and tired, enough to actually fall asleep.

When John woke the van was still moving, and it felt like they were going downhill. He found that his respirator had been removed, though his goggles were still over his eyes.

"Mornin' sleepyhead." Wynter sweetly said as John sat up.

"Just in time for the border." Griff added. "Sure you know the drill."

"Yeah, yeah." groaned John as he made sure his commlink was set to public mode and everything else was set.

There was a short line of cars ahead of them despite the early morning hour. While they waited, John logged into both Soldats to make sure they were still set the way he programmed them yesterday.

"Morning." one of the security guards said as Griff's window went down.

"Mornin'." Griff reciprocated.

Still connected to the drones, John could feel the querying pings from an unseen security hacker. He did his best to look calm as his own commlink was then pinged for data.

"You'll want to take I-70B or cut down to two-eighty-five. We've still got some trouble with go-gangs on I-70 and Sixth Avenue."

"Got it, thanks." Griff said.

"North on I-70B, then." H.M. said as he accelerated through the border check.

John pulled up some news AROs, and found many reports of the Godz and Ghostriders still fighting.

"Where were we going again?" Wynter asked.

"Parking lot for Café Giovanni." H.M. said flatly.

They rode on in silence, though John worried about the border checkpoints as it looked like they were heading straight to the Hub. It was a pain in the ass at times just being able to drive his motorcycle through. Two heavily armed drones would certainly stop them at the security check into the Hub.

"Worries about your drones?" Wynter asked.

John looked at her.

"Can see it in your aura. You're worried about something. You'd be worried about your friend, or the drones. And since your friend also makes you mad, figured it was the drones."

John wondered just how often Wynter looked at his aura. It felt unnerving how much she seemed to have picked up about him in such a short amount of time.

"Didn't plan on that, huh?" Griff asked.

John said nothing.

"Just lay off, okay?" Wynter asked.

"We'll walk the Hub." H.M. said.

This time Griff groaned.

"Can't walk a few blocks?" John asked.

"Cool it, both of you." snipped Wynter, "We'll walk."

The border crossing on Colfax was a lot smoother than John expected, and H.M. took the twisty roundabout turn off of Colfax to head towards Café Giovanni. He was soon pulling into a parking lot just outside of the Hub. John left all of his handguns except for his holdouts in his backpack.

It was not all that bad of a walk as they entered the Hub. It was easy enough for most of them to blend in with the rest of the foot traffic, though H.M. did draw a lot of looks, likely because of his four arms and eyes. John also did get pulled off to the side where a ZDF soldier ran a metal detector wand all over him before letting him pass.

Just as they walked into the parking lot in the basement where Café Giovanni John's commlink beeped with a text message from Hunter. Without reading it John shoved it to the side with all of the others. H.M. led the way deeper into the parking lot.

As they were walking, a limo pulled up beside them. Right away, as the rear window began sliding down, John was now wishing he at least had his Warhawk at his side.

Alesandro "Mr. Johnson" Ibáñez was sitting alone in the back seat. "Sorry about the quick meet, but I'm sure you'll understand when I say I really appreciate your work for me." he said, holding out his hand and four credsticks in each. Everyone took one, including John.

"It's all there." Alesandro told them. John slotted the credstick anyway, and indeed found the remaining fifty-five hundred nuyen on it.

"Maybe we'll be able to do business again." Alesandro said as his window slid back up. Then the limo drove off, leaving them there.

"I suppose you want a ride?" H.M. asked as he turned around and started walking back the way they came.

"Forget your manners?" John asked.

H.M. said nothing as they walked.

Getting out of the Hub was a lot easier than getting in, though the lack of foot traffic did mean they were more easily seen by the ZDF as they passed. John was just glad he did not get the same wand treatment again.

The trip back to the parking garage south of Happenstance was equally quiet, and John was glad to have his backpack on, astride his Katana-11, and his two new Soldats trailing just behind him as he took the back streets for a coyote trail, and for home.


	15. Run 15 : Critical Care

Run 15 : Critical Care (based on the mission written by Bruce Ford)

John sighed as he dropped back on his haunches, looking at what some might have considered to be a rather mean looking drone. It was the fourth GM-Nissan Doberman drone John had acquired, making it the sixth armed security drone altogether when you included the similar looking ATT Soldats.

But there was more to this latest edition to John's pack of security drones. Beneath the chipped and scratched camouflage paint job was a more seriously capable drone than John had expected to get. This Doberman had not been built and programmed for a home or business like the other five had been, but had been 'liberated' from a UCAS army post, and it had some surprises when John got to check 'under the hood'.

How the drone had been built up was nothing compared to what it was now armed with. A Stoner-Ares M107 heavy machinegun sat on its back like a massive cannon of some giant war robot from any number of sci-fi trids. It had taken John all morning to get the monstrous machinegun removed from its tripod and up onto the Doberman, though he honestly felt the equally massive laser weapon mounted on the drone he had named Hotspot was heavier still.

After a short breather John resumed making the necessary connections between machinegun and drone, which only took a few minutes. It took only a few more minutes for the drone to run its system checks and verify that it felt everything was in working order, aside from two alerts saying that both ammo bins were empty.

Rather than loading the ammo, John went to the refrigerator for a bottle of water. He had chugged half of the one liter bottle when his commlink started chirping with an incoming call. With a thought he grabbed the ID of the caller, and once he saw who it was did not bother with his goggles as he picked it up to answer it.

"Hey kiddo, how you feelin'?' came Tabby's voice as soon as John had accepted the call.

"Okay, 'spose."

"Well, there's a meet for work for ya at Five By Five." Tabby told him, "Be there in two hours. Think ya might like it."

"Got it." John said flatly, disconnecting the call.

John cleaned himself up some with a wet towel before gearing up for a trip to the underground smuggler bar. He also loaded up the new Doberman, named 'Ravage', with a belt of stick-n-shock and EX explosive ammo before leaving, leaving it like the others, set to defend his home in case anyone chanced breaking in.

With his knowledge of some of the underground tunnels of Denver, John made good time getting to Five By Five. He left his Katana-11 outside with the few other vehicles.

Matty Zorn waved to John as he walked in through the door. Like his other trips before, John pulled out all of his handguns and deposited them in the weapons check box that stood next to the front door. Last was his monofilament sword, which he propped next to the box instead.

"Damned Aurora Angels." a bar patron said just as he walked in behind John, "Warrens're bad enough without 'em hackin'…"

"Shut it, no shop talk." barked Matty Zorn from behind the bar.

The other patrons seemed content to ignore John for their own conversations. Matty motioned for John to come around the bar and through a burlap door into the kitchen. At least he had no problems with a kid in his bar.

Mr. Johnson was leaning back in a chair, his left leg resting across his right knee, with two bodyguards standing behind him. They were all human, though one of the guards was dark skinned. They wore gray suits, though Mr. Johnson had on a blue tie and short cut blond hair. They all looked to be about a meter-eight-two, and physically fit.

Hunter, Morph, and Valkyrie were already there, each of them with a plate of food in hand. Like John, they were dressed more casual, though Morph still managed to create a more upper class look. Morph looked even more hoity toity when John noticed the monocle in front of his left eye.

"Help yourself." Mr. Johnson said over the buzz of a white noise generator, gesturing to a table with a variety of dishes set out buffet style. He did not seem surprised at all that John was a kid. At least he would not have to prove himself to the others.

The table of food almost looked as good as what he saw at Café Giovanni Thursday last week, and John did not let that stop him from grabbing a plate and loading up with what looked and smelled most appetizing of the fare.

Just as John sat down in an empty chair, Billy busted in, cursing up a storm.

"What're you bitching about now?" Hunter asked.

Without even waiting, Billy went straight to the buffet table, and with a plate in hand started heaping food on it.

John scooped up another mouthful of something he figured was to imitate ground beef, pasta, and cheese sauce, though the flavors all seemed a bit bland. To him, it did not really matter if it was all soy or not, at least the taste was better than what he had at home, and there was a lot to go around.

Once Billy had a plate load of food, Mr. Johnson started his pitch. "I've asked for all of you for an investigation and recovery kind of job. Furthermore, this is the kind of job that we want kept out of the public eye because of the public relations dangers."

"Fuck the public." muttered Billy.

Mr. Johnson continued, "This one is far more important to be done quietly than quickly, though we can't wait forever. You'll have two weeks, tops. Job pays fifty-five hundred, each, half now and the rest when the job's done."

John waited for Billy's reaction, which was a loud groan through a food ladened mouth.

"Not enough for you?" Valkyrie asked.

"Fuck yeah!" Billy exclaimed, spraying bits of whatever he had been chewing on.

"Maybe something that'll make it easier for him to count." John commented. "Like six thousand. That way he can count it out on his fingers."

"Hey! I said I can count!" Billy cried.

"The math SPU counts for you." John flatly returned before taking another bite of food.

"Notice you're not bitching about Billy's bitching." Morph said.

John swallowed before saying, "Maybe because I got a better way than whining."

"Like you're any good." Billy said.

"Got nearly double the starting bid for a job last week." John told them.

"And you're worth every nuyen?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"If there's anything matrix related, he sure is." Hunter said.

"Just how good are you?" Mr. Johnson asked.

"I ain't got proof." John said.

"He's broken into at least three military grade or better networks and not been caught." Hunter said.

"Maybe four or five." Morph added, "And it's not just matrix stuff we've gotta deal with. Kid's better than you might think."

"Coming from a guy who could sell freezers to penguins." Valkyrie said.

"Well, one of you I already know, and two of you I kind of know." Mr. Johnson said, "So what about you other two?"

"She's got some powerful spirits to call upon." Hunter said, "Had one that really helped with a beetle a few months back."

"I didn't think there was a bug problem in Denver." Mr. Johnson said.

"Beetle spirits are typically loners." Valkyrie said, "The authorities already know, though I doubt they'll find anything much of value."

"And him?" Mr. Johnson asked, pointing to Billy, who was at the buffet table for a second helping of everything.

"Deadlier in a close up fight than any of us." Hunter said, "If the shit hits the fan the other guys are gonna really regret doing whatever it is that got us all here to begin with."

"So, how about eight thousand each for the job." Morph said, "We certainly can keep our mouths shut about this so your PR guys won't be putting out any fires."

Mr. Johnson sat thoughtfully for a few seconds, then said, "Okay, eight thousand each."

John smiled just a little before putting on a poker face again. The food almost tasted better with the next bite, but the sudden thought of Mina and the fact she was not there with him.

"Alright, I think we're all in on that." Morph said.

Billy did not look too pleased, but said nothing as he shoveled more food into his mouth. John wondered if it would take a payout of at least twenty thousand nuyen to make him happy.

When it looked like everyone else was agreeing, and John had no problem with eight thousand nuyen, Mr. Johnson said, "Great. You can call me Brent Fuller. I work for DocWagon. Three of our clients have gone missing under unusual circumstances. Normally when someone dies, we get feedback on their vitals. In three cases, we simply just lost the signal."

"Couldn't they have just gone into a Z-zone or something?" Morph asked.

John shivered. He did not like places like Z-zones, where there was no connection to the matrix.

"Not a chance, we'd know if that happened." Brent said. "We have filed missing persons reports with the first two, but when the third woman disappeared it was decided we needed to investigate further."

"And… deniable assets." Morph added.

"Commonality between the missing?" asked Hunter.

"All high-ticket contracts paid for by their employers, and they are all young ork women." Brent told them. "I also can't stress enough how much we need to keep secret that these women were DocWagon clients. And just as much, we need to know what happened to them, and that they be brought back alive to our facility in the CAS sector, on East twenty-first."

"Why not whatever DocWagon hospital's in the sector we find them in?" Valkyrie asked.

"It'll draw too much attention." Brent told them. "The one on twenty-first, they're already read into this, so they'll be able to keep this quiet."

"Anything else you know that you can tell us?" Hunter asked.

"The medical files have not been reviewed by any medical teams because of internal security measures, and we've not been informed of any ransom demands." Brent said. "Oh, here's their details." he added, tapping a few buttons on his commlink.

John noticed an incoming file transfer, and accepted three files from Brent. Judging by their names they were each a file on the missing women.

"I'm surprised you're not asking about hacking." Morph said, and John noticed the elf looking at him.

"We've had engineers go over our network with a fine toothed comb." Brent told them.

"Didn't find anything, I bet." John said.

"Kid's right." Brent admitted, "We're not quite sure what that means."

"Hacking DocWagon directly will leave a little something." John said, trying to think of ways any hacker could try to do the hacking without leaving something behind.

"We'll pick your brain later." Morph said.

"So, find the women, find out what happened to 'em, and I guess stop this from happening again?" Morph asked.

"That's it." Brent said.

"Well then, guess we ought to get going." Hunter said, setting her empty plate aside as she stood.

John hurriedly scooped the last of his plate's contents before rushing to catch up with her, Morph, and Valkyrie as they left. Hunter motioned for John to follow as Morph stopped at the bar on their way out.

"Could you give us a minute?" Hunter asked Valkyrie.

"Sure."

Once Valkyrie was out of earshot, Hunter asked, "You feelin' alright?"

"Yeah, fine." John said sharply.

"You sure? I remember that look." Hunter said, "Been a month since I've seen it."

"What look?" John asked, looking up at Hunter.

"That 'I'm pissed off at the world' look." Hunter told him, "Firefly's still alive. Should be ready to come home soon."

The door to Five-By-Five opened. "Don't forget your stuff." Morph said, with Billy right behind him.

John rushed back in to grab his pistols and his sword. Hunter was right behind him on the way back out.

"Got everything?" Morph asked.

"Yeah." John told him.

"I think we're square for the moment." Hunter said.

"Good. I know a place where we should be able to talk in private." Morph told them.

They were there a few minutes later. Morph had led them to a rundown parking garage that John sometimes used as an entrance to the coyote path they had just used.

Morph started, "Okay, already got a little bit of info on Brent 'Mr. Johnson' Fuller."

Billy groaned.

"Guy's legit for working for DocWagon. Career man." Morph told them, ignoring Billy, "Denver native, maybe a bit of an idealist, but wholly on the level."

"So no chance of a double cross?" Hunter asked.

"Seriously doubt it." Morph said. "Now, about DocWagon's systems."

"Should I keep it simple?" John asked.

"Yes."

"Easiest's to have someone on the inside, but any hacker could do it." John told them.

"Could you?" Billy asked.

"I think he's already done something like it already." Morph said for John.

"Lots." John said.

"What about the access log?" Hunter asked, "There's gotta be something left behind."

"Leave an agent behind to burn your log off, then burn itself." John replied, "Done it before, and it's worked."

"But if there's someone on the inside…" Valkyrie started.

"Then access logs are the least of their worries." Morph finished.

"You think it's an inside job?" asked Billy.

"Don't you?" Morph asked back.

"If it isn't an inside job, then whoever's doing it's got more balls than you." Hunter said. "We're talking about medics that wear heavy armor that'll come in with machineguns to extract their patient from the middle of a firefight. Not exactly someone you wanna piss off."

"Got away with a shit load of drugs one week." John said.

"You make a habit of robbing drugs from them?" Hunter asked sternly.

"No." John replied sheepishly.

"Just one load of a single drug, anyway." Morph added.

"There's the extra I took, too." John added.

"What?" Morph and Hunter asked in unison.

"When we were in the storeroom, I dumped a few dozen bottles in my backpack." John admitted. "Fenced 'em for about thirty grand."

"Enterprising." commented Morph.

Hunter only sighed.

"So what're we gonna do next?" Valkyrie asked.

"I say we check out one of their homes, first." Hunter said, "Might get some clues."

"And how're we supposed to do that?" asked Billy.

"The data we got on the three missing women?" Hunter asked back, "It included their home addresses."

Billy said nothing.

"Closest two are over by the university." Hunter said, "Should take a little over an hour to get there from here."

Traffic was a nightmare even though they did not even take the main streets through the heart of Denver. The University of Denver was in the middle of what used to be the Aztlan sector years ago. While some of the old sector still had a strong Aztlan influence to it, the neighborhoods close to the university had largely been cleaned up and rebuilt in a more contemporary CAS fashion.

The address Hunter chose belonged to Miranda Miller, and she lived in a small apartment complex east of the university's campus. Along the way John tried reading up the data on Miranda, though found a lot of it too medical for him. What he was able to get was that Miranda was an ork, healthy, and a part of some study/work program at the university that paid for her DocWagon contract. The provided image of Miranda looked like any other ID pic John had seen, though she did look kind of pretty for an ork. That brought up painful feelings about Mina, and so John closed the file to try and get them out of his mind.

The apartment building looked rather unremarkable compared to the other buildings, save that it was two stories tall, U-shaped, and clearly had several families living within its confines. The lawn looked rather healthy, well manicured, and well used as a play area for the kids living there.

"Morph and I'll go up and try talking to some of the residents." Hunter said, "You hang back just in case."

"Just in case of what?" asked Billy from the passenger seat of Valkyrie's dark green Toyota Gopher pickup.

Neither said anything as Hunter only waived back at them.

After a while, Valkyrie asked, "Just relax, can you?"

Thankfully Billy said nothing.

A rubber ball, a swirl of pink, white, and blue, came bouncing at them. John was quick off of his black Yamaha Katana-11 to intercept it before it bounced off into the street. A younger looking dwarf boy, maybe ninety centimeters tall and about eight or nine years old was chasing after it. He caught the ball when John gently kicked it back.

"Wow, wiz bike!" the boy exclaimed as he continued closer, the ball clasped between his hands. "How's it still standing?"

"Got a gyro so it can balance itself." John said.

"Neat!"

"Hey, you know Miranda?" John asked.

The dwarf boy gave him a look. John wondered if the dwarf boy was going to suddenly not talk to him because they were strangers.

"Big ork lady? Pretty?" John asked, "My… aunt missed her at university, came to see if she's alright. Dragged me along with."

The boy seemed to relax a little. "Ambulance picked her up last week." the boy said. "Had a funny name on it. 'Wagon' doctor." He giggled, "Didn't know wagons needed doctors."

John smiled at the joke, wondering if the dwarf boy meant DocWagon instead. "So she's at the hospital?"

"Ryan! Dinner!" called a woman from the apartment building.

"Yup. Bye bye!" the boy said, turning and running for home, his multicolored ball still held tightly between his hands.

John watched as Morph jumped out of the dwarf boy's way as they walked back up.

"Find anything?" John asked.

"Not much." Morph said, "She's got a not so serious boyfriend."

"And there's one woman here who's dead certain Miranda's been up to no good, and that's why she's missing now." Hunter added.

"Anyone say anything about DocWagon picking her up?" John asked.

"No, why?" Morph asked back, giving John a quizzical look.

"Ryan told me she got picked up by 'em." John told them.

"He's lyin'." Billy said. Looking back at Valkyrie's truck it looked like Billy had some difficulties getting out, and had only now managed to remember how a door handle worked.

"He wanted to butt in, but I wouldn't let him." Valkyrie told them.

"So, who's Ryan?" Morph asked.

"You nearly tripped on him coming back out." Valkyrie said.

"Think the kid knew what he saw?" Morph asked.

Hunter stood in silence before saying, "Maybe. Something just doesn't make sense, though."

"There's a small park a few blocks down if you think we need to try and talk this through." Valkyrie told them.

Hunter and Morph agreed.

The park took up a whole city block, with very little parking save for what you might be able to find along the street. It was well kept, with a bronze dome gazebo near the middle and a few tennis courts crammed into one corner. The park was relatively empty, save for a couple having a dinner picnic at the south end of the park.

"So, you think the kid was telling you the truth?" Hunter asked John.

"He coulda lied, but why?" John asked back.

Morph said, "He's got a point. What was he, seven, eight?"

"So we've got Mr. Johnson who's got us tracking down a missing woman that's not missing?" Billy asked. "Fuckin' stupid if ya ask me."

"No one asked." Hunter said sharply. "I'm gonna call someone about one of the others. Maybe he can shed some light."

After a short while, Morph said aloud, "What if the ambulance was fake?"

"What?" John asked. Glancing at Hunter, it looked like she was still in a silent conversation with a contact.

"A fake ambulance?" Valkyrie asked.

"Why not?" Morph asked back, "What if a fake ambulance is picking up these women?"

"Certainly wouldn't draw attention if it's done right." Valkyrie added.

Without saying anything, John pulled Merlin's commcode from his list of contacts. Silently he sent out a call.

"No way." Billy said, "You ain't gonna just get ork women to do what you want."

"Merlin's Antiquities." announced an icon of a blue robed wizard.

John decided to ignore the others as he said, "It's Cypher. Wonderin' if you've heard anything about a fake ambulance runnin' 'round town?"

"Fake ambulance." Merlin mused. "Now that you mention it, a mechanic I've done business with mentioned something about a big job on a VW Urbano."

"Urbano?" John asked.

"Big van, almost looks like an Ares Citymaster, like what DocWagon uses." Merlin told him. "Duke's his name. Whiz mechanic, and prob'ly one of the best I've seen in Denver. He's certainly got the skill for something like that."

"Sure, thanks." John said. He soon received contact information for Duke, and a virtual business card simply titled 'Duke's Garage'. John quickly saved this information.

"Pleasure doin' business with ya, kid." Merlin told him before he ended the call.

It looked like Hunter had just wrapped up her call when John started paying attention to the others.

"Word I got is they were picked up by DocWagon." Hunter told them.

"I think I know the guy who made the ambulance." John added.

"I think they're liars." Billy said.

"How reliable's your source?" asked Morph.

John opened up his jacket to show the elf his two Predators hidden within. "He sold me these. Custom order." he said.

"Right then." Morph said. It was not the first time he had seen those pistols of John's. John had drawn and used them when a rogue technomancer had tried killing them with a mob of BTL zombies months ago.

"That's good enough for you?" asked Billy.

"I've seen him use them. I know they're real." Morph said. "Now for all your bitching now, what do you think we should do?"

"Dump the kid and go to a bar." Billy told them.

Hunter sighed, "We've got clues and a trail. This ain't some wild drake chase."

"Walk now, and we'll talk Cypher into taking your retainer." Morph added. "And we'll be sure to let everyone know what kind of humanitarian you are."

John was quick to single out Billy's commlink.

Billy looked like he actually went a little pale.

"Well then," Hunter said, "Cypher knows where a mechanic is that made a fake DocWagon ambulance. Maybe we could convince him or her to give up the person who he did the job for."

"Maybe even let Billy kick his ass in case he won't?" John asked. The razorboy looked like he had been itching for a good fight.

"Sure." Hunter said as she started up her dark blue Thundercloud Contrail.

It was an hour long drive back across Denver, driving along the old demarcation line between the Aztlan and CAS sectors up to Colfax Avenue, then east before turning off onto Del Mar Parkway.

The neighborhood had clearly seen better days as they all parked in front of one of two loading bay doors. Someone apparently did care for the building, as the loading bay doors were relatively new, and the man door at the side was solid steel. The place smelled a little like home with a hint of motor grease and that metallic tint to the air all mechanic's garages seemed to have. John could even feel the pounding bass of troll thrash metal, the music almost drowning out the screeching sound of metal on metal cutting. Almost right away John recognized the band as 'Hammerhead', the song one in particular that John had listened to a lot.

A human teen boy leaned against the wall between the two loading doors, the glow of a thin cigarette clearly visible within the long shadow the garage cast in the setting sun, puffing away as he eyed everyone as they parked. He looked a little greasy, and John guessed maybe about four years older than himself.

"What you want?" the teen asked, his cigarette firmly held between his lips.

"We're here to talk to Duke." Morph said as he closed his car's door. From inside the garage the sound of screeching metal ceased.

"Call me Gears." the teen said, "Duke's inside." He walked over to the man sized door and opened it. He stayed outside as they walked in, holding the door open for them.

The music went from pounding to unbearably loud as they entered. Inside reeked of stale soykaf, grease, and ozone. Various award placards decorated some of the walls, along with hardcopy images of various engines and custom cars. Various tools and other machinery could be seen on a workbench and in cabinets and hanging on the walls.

A large troll in work clothes was cutting a length of pipe with a blowtorch. John could not hear it clatter when the cut was completed.

Then the troll straightened and turned around, stopping when he saw John and the others. With his left hand he lifted his welder's mask up, the other hand still holding the burning blowtorch. He asked something, but John could not make out what was being said over the deafening music.

John thought he heard Hunter yell something. With his empty hand, the troll reached for a large stereo, and the music suddenly stopped.

"That's better." Hunter said.

"Wow, I can still hear." remarked John.

"Ya need something?" the troll asked with a tusky grin.

"We've got a few questions about a job you did a few months back." Morph said.

"Fuck that," butted in Billy, "whadaya know 'bout a girls gettin' kidnapped by a fake ambulance?"

Morph and Hunter both groaned. Even John thought it was a really dumb thing to ask like this. It never worked in the trids he watched, and the suspect always got tight lipped about the subject regardless if they knew anything or not.

"I don't know what you're talkin' about." the troll said, looking like he was getting ready to cut them apart with his blowtorch.

"Bullshit." scoffed Billy.

"Billy, why not just shut up?" asked Valkyrie.

"Make me." Billy challenged.

John heard the razorboy cry out, and looking over at Billy saw him with his fully artificial right arm held high in the air in one of Valkyrie's hands.

"Shut it." Valkyrie ordered, "Try anything and you lose the arm."

Billy's jaw went tight. He apparently took the magician's threat seriously.

"You can go. I got work to do." the troll told them, cutting the flame to his blowtorch and setting it aside.

"Duke is it?" asked Morph.

"What's it to ya?" the troll asked back, freeing the pipe he had just cut from the vice that held it.

"Something serious is going on. We know you know something." Morph said, "Three ork women in two months. Most recent was last week."

"Ya check with Lesker 'n Humanis?" Duke asked.

"Not his business. They're CAS women." John said. He honestly had no idea where the three were kidnapped, but figured if it were closer to home maybe Duke would open up a bit.

"And Humanis wouldn't bother with a kidnapping. They'd just have the women murdered." Valkyrie added.

"Maybe this'll help." Hunter said with a touch of serious and sweetness, stepping up to Duke. She discretely handed him something tiny, something that virtually disappeared in Duke's meaty hand.

Whatever it was, John figured it was a chip of some kind as Duke slipped it to his commlink with less finesse than Hunter had managed. His eyes darted back and forth like he was reading something. Seemingly satisfied, he pulled the chip and handed it back to Hunter.

"Ya know they dropped a huge wad on the job." Duke said.

"And our employer's afraid that these kidnappings are gonna happen more frequently." Morph said, "He's honestly concerned for their wellbeing."

Duke sighed heavily. "Fred and Bert. They used to be DocWagon, but did organleggin' on the side. Got 'em fired for it."

John felt the blood rush from his head. At the best organlegging got people in need transplant organs, but at the more frequent worst it meant people got killed to feed ghouls.

"Oh shit." cussed Hunter.

"They're at one-eleven Oneida Street." Duke said, turning away from them.

"Ya know, my car outside's got a small problem." Morph said, "Mind if we talk a bit?"

"Sure." Duke replied.

"C'mon." Hunter said, bobbing her head at the door.

John followed behind as Valkyrie escorted Billy back outside. It was not until they were all outside and the door closed behind them that she let go of Billy's arm.

Gears was also outside, leaning against the garage wall where they had first seen him. A fresh cigarette smoldered from between his lips.

"Fuckers." John heard Billy mutter as he walked over to Valkyrie's truck to sulk.

"So, what'd you give him to make him talk?" John asked Hunter.

"A bribe." Hunter said with a grin. "Not much, really. Just three thousand nuyen."

Billy scoffed, "I coulda saved ya the cred."

"Actually, you did." Hunter replied, her grin growing.

Behind the black lenses of his goggles, John's eyes went wide. It looked like Valkyrie was just as quick to come to the same conclusion. John burst out laughing. Even Gears chuckled.

"What's so funny?" asked Billy.

"Check your commlink." Hunter said, casually sitting sideways on the seat of her dark blue Contrail.

John's laughter was renewed at the thought of Hunter's previous line.

Billy paused for a moment. It was hard to tell if he was deep in thought or had gone to VR with the blank expression on his face.

It was almost too fast to see when Billy lunged at John. For a moment his body reacted without conscious thought, throwing himself to the ground in a shoulder roll to evade Billy's fist. The tumble brought him to a crouching position, facing Billy, and almost as quick both of his Morrissey Élan pistols were in his hands.

"Freeze, hot stuff." Hunter barked, her voice carrying the weight of authority. John could see she had already drawn her own Predator IV and had it leveled on Billy.

"Fucker stole my money!" Billy cried. He was still half crouched down from his lunge at John.

"I'm that fucker, not Cypher." Hunter sternly said. "He ain't the only hacker here, numb nuts. It was my idea to hack you and use your money to pay for your big mouth."

Billy growled as he stood upright.

John also stood, but he kept his holdouts in his hands. He was already prepared to empty their magazines into Billy if he needed to.

"You've got the social graces of a drunken ork." Hunter continued. "Next time, I won't take just three grand, I'll take it all."

"We all set?" asked Morph as he came outside.

"Dunno, are we?" Hunter asked, her steely gaze not leaving Billy for an instant.

"Yeah." Billy said flatly.

"Alright then." Morph said, "Val, I'll need to ride with you guys. Gonna have Duke look at my car for a bit."

"Sure." Valkyrie said, opening the door to her pickup truck.

Feeling that the ordeal was over, John let his holdouts slide back up his sleeves.

They had to backtrack across the CAS sector to reach Oneida Street. John half expected Billy to whine about the back and forth driving across Denver, but the razorboy kept quiet. John was also sure that any one of them would have been quick to point out that Billy had been riding the whole way, and did not even have his own vehicle to drive.

The neighborhood where Oneida street was looked rundown. At Hunter's suggestion, John sent Laserbeak out to recon the area, and through the tiny drone's sensors he saw peeling paint and the gang marking of the Godz on many of the houses. He also took images of the house's front and back doors, focusing on the locks that he could see.

"There's nothing magical going on that I can see." Valkyrie said over their networked connection that Hunter was hosting. "Could see two people in the house. Probably them. Nothing special."

"So no magic or implants, that's helpful." Hunter said.

"Not a lot of signals, either." John added, instructing Laserbeak to hide above the front door of their target house.

"What've you got?" Hunter asked.

"Just two commlinks and a van." John told them. "None of 'em are being used, and nothing useful on 'em. There's no CHN, either."

"No GPS or GridGuide?" Hunter asked.

"Shit's disabled. And their 'links ain't got any history I can use." John said.

"Right. Just make sure they can't be used." Hunter told him.

"So how do you wanna do this? I think you're the siege expert here." Morph said.

"How long do you think it'll take to pick one of those locks?" Hunter asked.

There was silence for a few seconds before Morph said, "Maybe five, seven seconds."

"Then we do this quietly." Hunter told them, "We slip in, catch 'em with their pants down…"

"And beat the shit out of 'em." Billy finished.

"If we need to." Hunter amended. "We do need them alive to tell us what they know."

John thought he could feel Billy scowl through the network.

They waited until after sunset, the warm shadows growing and cooling the neighborhood as they crept. When Hunter thought it was dark enough they approached on foot.

The neighborhood was quiet, too quiet John felt. It almost seemed like a stretch of Aurora where the houses had not yet fallen apart due to neglect, but just barely alive from a handful of squatters and other residents who might call the area home.

Hunter led off, walking more casually than John thought they should have as they walked right up to the front door. She and Valkyrie hid Morph from the street as he picked the old fashioned tumbler lock. Within seconds he had the door open for them.

John drew both of his Predators before stepping in, the pistols chambering stick-n-shock rounds at his command.

The air inside the house smelled stale, like no windows or doors had been opened long enough to let in fresh summer air. The first room was a mix of a living room and dining room, neatly laid out with matching furniture that looked as old and worn as the house. Through an archway towards the back John could also see a small kitchen.

Hunter lead the way to a hallway off to their left. Morph was right behind her. They stopped when they reached a pair of opposed doors, and Morph quietly checked the one on their left. John thought it might have been a bathroom, but Morph closed the door too soon.

Just as quietly, Morph checked the other door. It looked like it was locked when Morph did not open it.

"Odds are they're in there." Valkyrie said softly.

"Then let's bash in!" Billy said in an excited whisper.

Hunter and Morph both stood back. Hunter gestured for Billy to do the honors.

Just as Billy stepped up, Hunter stopped him. "We need them alive." she said quietly and harshly.

Using the other door for leverage, Billy shouldered his way through the locked door. Right away Hunter was in through the door, and John hurried right behind her.

The bedroom was tiny, and smelled of something John could not quite figure out what. It was also very dimly lit, though that mattered little to John's eyes.

"Alright you two," barked Hunter, grabbing blankets with her cybernetic arm and yanking them off, "out of bed!"

"What the?" cried out a stocky man as he rolled out of bed.

"C'mon, out!" yelled Hunter as she grabbed another man that had apparently been sleeping in the same bed.

The first man stood, and was just a bit shorter than Hunter once he was fully upright. His blond hair was looking as frazzled as John figured the man felt.

"Oh God, oh God!" John cried when he looked both men over. As quickly as he could get around Valkyrie he headed back into the living room.

"Guess there's no need to strip search these guys!" Morph said laughing.

"C'mon big boys, cover up and get your asses out in the living room." John heard Hunter say.

John holstered his Predators, keeping his back away from the others as they came out.

"Too much manliness for ya?" chided Billy from right behind John.

"You can have my share." John told him, trying to get the image of two large, heavy, naked men out of his mind.

"Have a seat, both of you." Hunter said, and John heard the squealing scrunch of couch springs.

"Relax a little, we only got some questions for you to answer." Morph said.

"We got protection, you know." one of the men said.

"We saw the Godz logo on your home." Hunter said, "Just so you know, we really don't give a shit."

"Capped three of 'em myself last week." John added.

"Now word is you guys are into organlegging and kidnapping." Morph said, "We also know you've got a fake DocWagon ambulance you're using to snatch ork women."

"So what the hell do you want?" the same man asked.

"Names and places." Morph said, "Who're you working for and where'd you take the women?"

"Go fuck yourself." the other man said.

"I think you were doing plenty of that already." Hunter said.

"I already know the tracking in your van's disabled." John said, "Would've been easy 'nough to find if ya didn't."

"You ain't got nothing." the first man said.

"Fred, Bert," Hunter said in a really super sweet tone, "We got enough shit on you to burry you, and I don't think anyone will give a shit if we do."

"I could always hack DocWagon." John offered, "Find who got canned for organleggin'."

"Not a bad idea." Hunter said, "I'm sure DocWagon would've kept it quiet and all. How long will it take?"

John thought about it for a little bit, then said, "I figure about ten seconds tops to break in, and another five to find the data."

"Fifteen seconds, nice." Hunter said.

"Bullshit." the blond said.

"Well, what about getting caught?" Morph asked.

"Had to hit a corp node that fast at the ski resort." John said, thinking about when he broke into the Celsius Intellect corporate node at the Winterland ski resort. "Took a little longer 'cause it was encrypted."

"Wasn't it two?" asked Hunter.

"Oh yeah, two in three days." John said, remembering that Hunter knew about the speed job he had done on the Horizon lodge. "Their software's bleedin' edge, too. Nowhere near the best commercial grade shit you'll ever find."

"So it looks like we don't even have to kill you." Morph said, "Though I'm sure DocWagon'll really hate us for it, telling the world that they had two organleggers on the payroll. Don't know what the Godz will think about protecting people in your line of work. So, first up, who're you working for?"

"His name's Mr. Weiss." the first one said.

"Shut it, Fred!" hissed the other man.

John went straight to the message and call logs on their commlinks. He found a few call records that said were from a Mr. Weiss, but each one was from a different commcode. He groaned.

"What is it?" asked Morph.

"Hang on." John said as he pulled the commcodes aside and started doing a little research on them. Within half a minute he had his answer, and he certainly did not like it. "They got calls from this Weiss guy, and they're all from Computer Exchange disposable 'links."

"Sounds like this guy's smarter than you." remarked Billy.

"Only if he didn't use a credstick to buy 'em." John countered, digging up more information from the text message data. "Fucker used a proxy, too."

"What's that mean?" Billy asked.

"Means I'm gonna get really pissed off if I gotta hack a dozen fuckin' nodes tonight." John growled.

"What's a kid like you gonna do?" Bert asked.

Silently John received a text message from Hunter, saying, "_Pull your shotgun, but don't aim._"

John turned to face the two men. Sitting down on the couch, they did not seem quite as imposing, buck ass nude with only a few blankets to cover their modesty. Either one looked like he would weigh at least three times John's meager forty-something kilograms. Overall John was afraid of one of them falling on him and squishing him like a soybean more than anything else they might do. Reaching behind himself, John pulled his Hatamoto II.

"First time I saw him pull that, I was getting mauled by a hellhound." Hunter said, "Kid blew the front half of that monster to vapor. Poof!"

With his thumb, John pulled back the hammer of his pistol. With his other hand, he pulled out a second slug for it.

"Yup, same ammo too." Hunter said, "Those ain't legal for the common man. LEOs use 'em to blow apart locks, hinges, and doors. And I mean the heavy, reinforced, armored doors that real criminals have."

"You might as well talk, 'cause he ain't been in a good mood today." Morph added, "The razorboy, well, I think he'd just kill ya and be done with it. Cypher, on the other hand, I think he's pissed off enough to see if he can shoot off a leg."

When it almost looked like to John that Fred and Bert might not talk, John casually brought his Hatamoto II up to aim somewhere around the larger man's hip. He was sure he might hit the man's crotch, but could really care less if he did or not.

"P…pay us some cred so we can get outa town, okay?" the larger man, Bert, asked.

"Sure. We'll let you keep what you've got." Hunter told them.

"Bitch." muttered Billy.

"Don't mind him." Hunter said, bobbing her head at Billy, "He's just pissed 'cause I used his money for a bribe earlier today."

"We only get calls from Mr. Weiss!" the blond man, Fred, blurted out, "We ain't ever seen him!"

"How's it go down?" Morph asked.

"The women're knocked out with some kind of drug." Bert told them, "We don't know how or who does it. Their bracelets're programmed to detect it, then some program deletes them from DocWagon's network, and then we get the message."

"There's gotta be an inside man." Morph reasoned, "Who is it?"

"There… There's this guy, Barry Winslow." Fred said, "Mr. Weiss mentioned him once. He might work for DocWagon."

"And where've you taken the women once you pick 'em up?" Morph asked.

"There's a place called the Farm in… in the Warrens." Bert stammered. "It's a school. You'll find it south of Smoky Hills Road."

Hunter groaned. "Shit, I think I know where that is. We weren't too far from there a month ago."

"So you know where they're at?" Morph asked.

"Ain't many schools in the Warrens." Hunter said, "Only one I know of in that part of town, and it ain't a nice part of town."

"I think they're hiding something from us." Morph said, eying Fred and Bert.

"That's all, I swear!" cried Fred.

"Talk, or I'll probe your minds." Valkyrie threatened, "And I won't be nice about tromping around in your brains."

"The place is run by ghouls!" Fred blurted out hurriedly.

"That's all of it, I swear!" Bert added.

"Honest!"

"They believe so." Valkyrie said.

"I think we're done here." Morph said.

"You're letting us live?" Fred asked.

"Yeah, we are?" asked Billy.

"Why not take their fake ambulance?" asked Hunter.

Fred and Bert paled.

"Check around. You'll be able to find a Scoot or Papoose for dirt cheap." John said, holstering his Hatamoto II and pocketing the shell.

"Oh yeah, can you gimp their 'links?" Hunter asked. "Don't want 'em making any warning calls or such."

"Easy." John replied. With a thought he rigged their commlinks with a two day lockout against doing anything, set to start when he logged off of them. "Two days good 'nough?"

"Should be." Hunter said.

"Right then, let's go." Morph told them.

John was right behind Valkyrie as they left. He logged off the two commlinks, and called Laserbeak back to him as he walked out the front door. Right after that he began rewriting the access privileges to the van as he ordered it to meet them on the street.

"You don't think we should kill 'em?" asked Billy as they walked out the front door.

"No wheels, and no money for two days." Hunter said, "How well do you think you'd do trying to chase someone down to kill?"

"Pretty well." Billy replied. John thought he could feel the grin dripping off of the razorboy's face.

Morph whistled as the fake ambulance came around. "That Duke did a hell of a job."

The fake DocWagon ambulance looked exactly like any of the others John had seen in the past. Even the DocWagon logos looked like they were in the correct place and were the right red and black colors.

John added Morph as an authorized user to the van. "You can drive it." he said.

"I think it best we take a coyote path into the Warrens." Hunter said as they walked down the otherwise empty street. "We'll meet up at that abandoned factory just outside the Warrens on Buckley.

"We should just hit the place now." Billy told them.

"And I ain't gonna without a bigger gun." Hunter countered as she started up her Contrail.

"I got some big guns I could bring." John offered.

"Got plenty of ammo for those drones?" Hunter asked.

"I think so."

"Any's better than none." Morph added.

"Alright, bring 'em." Hunter said.

It was rather uneventful getting into the tunnels. After passing Five By Five, John left the group to take a different path to the surface. A few minutes later he was back at home.

Everything looked fine as John walked inside. At his wireless call the four Doberman and two Soldat drones were up and at his side.

"Awe shit." John cussed to himself as he thought about the drones following him through the Aurora Warrens. A hacker go-gang called the Aurora Angels claimed part of the Warrens as their turf, and a bunch of security drones would be too tempting a target to pass up. Not wanting to juggle an extra six drones as slaves to his mind directly, John opted for what he thought was a more brutal approach.

First he copied the cracked encryption program he had to each of them, and encrypted each of them with a slightly different algorithm. He then set the program to encrypt a communication web between each of the six drones. It certainly was not perfect, but it at least would slow down a hacker.

Next came the hard part. Sitting down on the floor in front of the drones, John let his mind slip into virtual reality while he held connections to each of them. There he reached deep into the resonance, pulling for the raw code to create a destructive booby trap program called a data bomb. Within his virtual hand appeared a black orb that crackled from within with violet-white electricity, hot and violently destructive.

Then John called his data sprite to him, giving it the task of further augmenting this very nasty data bomb even further with destructive code. It felt like holding the bottled up lightning of a category five hurricane within an orb the size of a baseball.

As quickly as John could, he set the data bomb to each of his drones, including Laserbeak, their weapons, the commlink on his goggles, his two Predators, and his Katana-11 motorcycle. Whatever he could think of that one of the Aurora Angels might try to hack. It took two tasks from his data sprite by the time he was done, but he felt it was worth it. Not only had the data bombs been set, but they would never self delete once triggered. In addition to that, each detonation would include a powerful pulse of biofeedback code so lethal that it would make a hacker think twice about stumbling into the node a second time.

Bringing himself back to reality, and feeling a little dizzy from how deep he reached into the resonance, John lumped the drones into a single networked and encrypted connection directly to his mind. He then set them with an order to protect him, then to follow him before leaving for the meeting spot Hunter described.

John took a slightly roundabout way to the factory, heading south to Alameda Parkway before coming back up north on Buckley Road.

The others, save Hunter, were already there when John arrived.

Morph whistled when he saw John roll into the parking lot. "Thought it was a couple of guns."

"Last time, it was." Valkyrie added.

"Picked up a few more since then." John said. He could feel the signals of the drones as they flanked him, three to either side of him.

"Is it me, or does that one look extra mean?" Morph asked.

John looked to see which drone Morph was asking about. "Military surplus." he said, looking at Ravage, "At least that's what I was told."

"Can we get on with it?" asked Billy.

"Got a hot date tonight?" Morph asked back.

"With his hand." John answered.

It looked like Billy was thinking hard about something, but kept his mouth shut and did nothing.

"Besides, we've gotta wait for Hunter." Valkyrie said.

A few minutes later a Ford Spiral came down the road and turned around into the parking lot. Right away John recognized Hunter's car. "Are we all here?" Hunter asked as she got out of the car.

"Present, armed and dangerous." Morph said.

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Hunter when she saw John and the six drones at his sides. "Think you've got enough firepower?"

"Hope so." John replied.

"They smart enough to get into the van?"

"If Morph can get the door."

"Not a prob." Morph told them.

John sent a command to his drones to climb into the fake ambulance once the doors were opened.

"Can you guys give us a few?" Hunter asked.

"Sure." Morph said, walking over to the fake ambulance.

Valkyrie said nothing as she got back into her pickup truck.

"You mind?" Hunter asked Billy, glaring at him when he didn't leave.

Billy looked rather grumpy when he answered, "Yeah." He remained standing where he was.

"Why don't you git before Cypher and I figure out who can hack you the fastest?"

"Fine." pouted Billy as he walked over to the ambulance.

"Maybe we should take this wireless, just in case." suggested Hunter.

John picked up on Hunter's internal commlink, sending a request for a private and encrypted chat with his mind directly.

"_Don't know if it's a good idea to bring this up now or not, but… How're doing about Firefly?_" Hunter asked him.

John softly groaned and looked away from Hunter. He ran two fingers over his right ear as he tried to think of something to say.

"_She's pretty much ready to come home._" Hunter told him, "_And I think she's a bit pissed that you haven't called._"

"_She should be._"

"_She's not pissed because you think you failed her that night._" Hunter said sternly, "_She's pissed because she thinks you don't like her. I'm the one that told you to run, remember? She knows you didn't abandon her that night._"

John swallowed hard. "_I don't know what to tell her."_

"_You might not have to say anything at all._" Hunter told him. "_Just try being there for her._"

"C'mon," Hunter said aloud, "I think it's time we got going."

Hunter led the way as they drove into the Warrens, hosting a conference network so they all could still talk to each other.

Buckley Road was one of the few true thoroughfares of the Aurora Warrens, being relatively free of debris like wrecked or abandoned cars, where one could almost drive straight through without having to stop too many times.

They were getting close to Hampden Avenue when Valkyrie broke the silence. "We've got company coming up fast behind us."

"Fuck 'em." Billy said.

"I can drop you off if you like." Valkyrie offered.

Half a dozen motorcycles zipped past them, and John saw the winged 'A-A' logo of the Aurora Angels on the bikes and the backs of a few leather jackets.

Base-13 was riding solo on an old looking Yamaha Rapier. He and two other motorcycles cut ahead of Hunter, stopping and blocking their path. Tires squealed as everyone came to a stop just north of the intersection to Hampden Avenue.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" yelled Hunter as she got out of her car.

"We got a small problem with you guys just driving through our turf like you own the place." Base-13 replied.

"Maybe you're pissed about the butt whoopin' I gave your best hacker the last time we met." John said loudly.

"Some of us think you got lucky, kid." Base-13 called back, "Think you got the code?"

"Bet you can't keep your ass on your wheels!" called out another of the Angels. His hands flew about in the air like he was working with the AROs of a hacking program.

"What makes you think I can't?" John asked back. He started feeling out the web of wireless signals to try and isolate that Angel's commlink.

"Fuck!" cussed the Angel, his hands freezing in mid air like they had just been struck with a ruler. At about the same time John felt something disappear from the web of signals about them.

"What happened?" asked Base-13.

"I thought I had his bike, and my 'link just crashed. Piece of shit." the angel told them.

"Cypher, what'd you do?" Hunter asked warily.

John grinned big. "Booby trap." he happily said. "Try again, I dare ya."

"Doesn't matter. We got other ways." Base-13 said, and as if on cue several of the Angels pulled out pistols. "We want some compensation for you passing through."

"Yeah, sure." Billy said as he walked between the ambulance and John's motorcycle. He did not sound at all intimidated by the number of handguns trained on them. "How'd'ya want it?" he asked as he extended the trio of blades hidden in his arms.

"Awe, c'mon. You should know us better than that." Base-13 said.

"I don't need to." Billy countered. He brought his arms up like an old fashioned pugilist.

The blades suddenly retracted.

"Yes!" exclaimed one of the Angels. John figured that Angel had just hacked Billy's cybernetics. The razorboy's software was so far out of date it was almost embarrassing.

"Shit!" cussed Billy.

"Told ya you need to update." Hunter said. "_Think you're defended well enough to bring your drones out and threaten them?_" Hunter silently asked John.

"Seriously." the Angel added.

"_Hell yeah._" John replied.

Morph said nothing over their network, but through the ARO John had that showed the viewpoint of his drones he saw Morph head to the back of the fake ambulance and open up the doors. John then sent them a command to come out and hold just behind the Angels in the other lane, and for each one to take aim at a different motorcycle.

"Cypher, why not introduce them to your pack." Hunter said.

"Jesus!" cried one of the Angels behind John.

"Three of 'em got machineguns." John said, "They'll cut you down like nothing."

"Sure they will. Nice toys, kid. But you'll lose 'em if you ain't careful." Base-13 chided.

"Fuck!" cussed one of the Angels.

"Shit!" yelled another.

"What's going on?" asked Base-13

"My 'link crashed!" cried the first angel.

John smiled big.

"What's so funny?" asked another Angel.

"My stuff's booby trapped." John told them. "Remember?"

"Your move." Hunter said. "You shoot, they cut you down."

"Tenebrous?" Base-13 asked.

John wondered if Base-13 was ever going to remember having met him before or not.

Tenebrous, the second in command of the Aurora Angels, John knew was a technomancer. He remembered their battle of champions when they first met, and how he had dealt her a heavy final blow with a rethreaded black hammer attack form that looked like a gleaming silver bladed sword. John had an idea how good she was with the code and her forms, but had no real idea what she could do with sprites. Especially when some of the most amazing things John did within the matrix were with the help of a pair of strong sprites he occasionally reregistered to keep them around.

The boyish looking teen girl looked like she was deep in thought. She might have even been in VR for a short while for all John knew. She looked like she had gone three shades pale when she finally lifted her head.

"Well?" asked Base-13.

"I ain't fuckin' touchin' those drones of his." Tenebrous said, "I don't know where he got 'em, but they've got some fucking bad traps on 'em."

"How bad?" Base-13 asked.

"Fry your brain if you fuck with 'em in VR." John answered, "And they don't go away once they go off."

"Sounds like military grade black pits." commented Hunter.

"Of course, we could always do a champ battle like last time." John said.

Tenebrous shook her head.

"I think your Lieutenant's got the right idea." Hunter said. "And I'd appreciate it if you guys didn't try hacking the rest of our stuff."

For extra emphasis, John ordered his drone Hotspot to aim its Ares MP3 laser at Base-13's head.

Base-13 looked rather disappointed, and a bit nervous when he noticed Hotspot. He started up his motorcycle, and with a raised hand he motioned for the others to pull out.

When it looked like the Aurora Angels were truly leaving, John called off the target locks on the Aurora Angels and ordered them back into the fake ambulance.

"Shoulda just ran 'em over." muttered Billy as he walked back to Valkyrie's truck. "Woulda saved us a shit load."

"Get your own car and you can." Hunter replied.

"Guess you didn't spring for that Elektro, eh?" John asked. He knew it was obvious since Billy still was not driving his own vehicle. but liked reminding him that a twelve year old boy had his own motorcycle while a grown man did not.

"Elektro?" Valkyrie asked as they all started moving again.

"Found an ad for a cheap car for Billy last month." John said, "Should'a been able to buy it and a fake driver's license by now."

The rest of the trip was spent in relative silence as they continued south. Just as John was starting to wonder if they were going to come out of the south end of Hell, Hunter turned right. He could not tell if it was Smoky Hill Road or not as he could not see any road signs, nor were there any AROs to help navigate. He considered getting a detailed mapsoft of the Denver area, but decided against it as an area as abandoned as the Warrens probably would not be covered at all.

"Doesn't south take us straight there?" asked Morph. Guess he knew the territory better than John thought.

"Avoiding the Fronts' territory." Hunter said, "And I believe the best route makes us pretty visible."

"You're the expert." Morph said.

Billy grunted, giving John the impression the razorboy disagreed.

A sharp left turn was next, and they were heading back south east on a four lane, divided road. Part of this looked familiar to John as they slowly drove on. After several blocks Hunter pulled to a stop.

"Valkyrie, go astral and check out the next block. There should be a large building on the right."

"Got it." Valkyrie said.

A few minutes later Valkyrie said, "Looks like it could be a school, but there's only a few squatters. No ghouls, no wards, no nothing else."

"Think they pulled out already?" asked Morph.

"If they did then every military'd love to know how they get their intel." Hunter said.

"There's another building to the south, along the road." Valkyrie said, "And I think that's the place. Warded with two watchers patrolling about."

"Any way we can get a clear look without being seen?" Hunter asked.

"I don't think so."

"Got that little bug drone, Cypher?" asked Morph.

"Yeah," John said, "But Ravage's got a way better sensor package. It's also got the software to sneak about."

"Go ahead and send it. But only that one." Hunter said.

Morph opened the door again for the Doberman, and John prompted it out and to run down the street. He only gave it guiding directions, letting its own dog brain make the decisions about how to hide and such.

Like most of the Warrens, once upon a time Aurora might have been a beautiful stretch of Denver. Now trees grew wild and weeds choked what might have been well manicured lawns.

At the intersection John told Ravage to turn right and follow the sidewalk, to go quickly but stealthfully as it went. After a hundred meters the drone slowed and crept carefully into some weeds to hide. Through its sensors John noticed it had caught movement through a distant broken window of a school building south of Ravage's current spot.

The zoom on Ravage's camera was top notch as John had it focus in on the movement that made it decide to hide. It was only with the aid of the lowlight filter as well was John able to pick out a shadowy figure, and the software running in Ravage identified the figure as wearing camouflage armor and carrying an FN-HAR assault rifle, and a detailed rundown on the general specs of that model of assault rifle. It even gave a sixty-seven percent chance that the subject was human and a ghoul.

John whistled.

"What is it?" asked Morph.

"Found the place." John said, "Unless assault rifles are all the rage for ghouls these days."

"Wait, what?" asked Hunter.

"The drone's got data on guns." John said as the ghoul walked off from view. "It identified an FN-HAR in a ghoul's hands."

"You sure it was a ghoul?" asked Billy.

"Better looking than you." John said as he watched Ravage start walking down the street once more, though slowly and more cautiously than before. "Even with the white eyes and gray skin."

Billy growled.

"Just keep a watch on your drone, okay?" asked Hunter.

The school, like the neighborhood, looked like it had seen better days. Many of the first story windows were boarded over, with the basement windows having an added iron grill-work to them. The windows of the second story were mostly broken, and every so often Ravage would stop and hide as its camera zoomed in on someone it caught moving.

"A lot of broken windows." John commented.

"Ghouls can't see through glass." Valkyrie told them.

"Bullshit. Ghouls see just fine." Billy said.

"They will if they spend the cred to get cybereyes." Valkyrie amended, "But most ghouls don't, and they're blind. They see in the astral, and can see people quite well. Even when it's pitch black."

"What about drones?" John asked as Ravage stopped and identified a security camera for him. Not only had the drone spotted it, but it also found it wirelessly as well. Right away he started analyzing the camera's node.

"Drones don't have auras, so they're not as easy to see." Valkyrie said.

"Guess that's why the one ghoul walkin' hasn't seen Ravage." mused John.

"That's part of why I had you do that." Hunter said. "Figured a drone'd be harder to spot than any of us."

"I think the doors got cameras." John said.

"Thought ghouls're blind." Billy said.

"Doesn't stop 'em from using VR." Hunter said. "Their brain can still process visual data, even if their eyes can't see."

John changed the ordered path, instructing Ravage to now circle around the school building. Ravage had continued on, but the camera was still within a mutual signal range with it. By the results John was getting from the camera, there were no traps or data bombs but the firewall was top notch. If he was going to bust in hard and fast he was going to need some help from his sprites.

That was when John noticed a program Ravage was running that he thought he had noticed as only idle before. He was able to pull up a read-only copy of its progress, and found it was a scanned three dimensional representation of their target school building and the surrounding area. John decided to bring this up once Ravage had circled once around the school.

"How's it going?" asked Hunter.

Ravage was about two thirds the way completely around, having spotted a second camera near a set of double doors on the far side. Weeds and other plants had grown wild for many years, giving Ravage a fair amount of cover to use against the ghouls as it slowly walked the field inside a track ring.

"Another camera, another set of doors." John said, "And it doesn't look like Ravage's been spotted."

"That's good." Hunter said.

Ravage found a hole in a chain link fence as it almost completed its circuit, slowly prowling through an abandoned tennis court. When it reached the far end it stopped, and the running program reported a completed scan of the building. John pulled up a copy of the image and saved it to the commlink in his goggles. From there he shared it with the others.

"What's this?" asked Morph.

"A, uh, tactical scan of the school. Compliments of Ravage's military software." John said.

"Military software?" Hunter asked warily.

"Kid said the drone was military surplus." Morph said.

"Just hope you cleaned it yourself." Hunter said.

It was a few minutes before Morph broke the silence. "So, what're we looking at?"

"Cameras at each entrance, and one identified ghoul patrolling from the second floor." Hunter said thoughtfully, "Sneaking up in vehicles is going to be impossible, and we've got no idea how many are inside."

"So we'll sneak up on foot?" asked Valkyrie.

"We've got plenty of trees for cover on the north side to get close." Hunter told them, "From there we can sneak along the east wall to the back doors. Cypher can get the cameras easy, and maybe any locks that're in the way."

"If they're wireless." Morph added.

That worried John. Ravage had plucked out wireless cameras, and it looked like the doors had relatively new looking locks on them, but there were no signals. Hopefully the drone had just been too far away.

"Slow and steady, or blasting in?" asked John.

"Now we're talking!" commented Billy. "I say blasting in!"

"He means hacking." corrected Hunter, "Think you can speed hack without getting caught?"

"The cameras ain't like Winterland. Maybe top notch commercial." John told her.

"Do it fast."

John focused his mind on his complex forms first. It was becoming quite easy to rethread his stealth and exploits considering how many times he had done it in the past. His virtual hands felt sharper than his monomolecular sword, and that was when he could see them through the robe of his stealth form or the pain of a splitting headache. He figured he overdid it this time.

Trying to push the pain aside, John relayed himself through Ravage to virtually reach the security camera at the school's back doors. Three quick hits to the firewall and John had himself the administrator access he wanted.

The inside of the camera's node looked like a police interrogation room. In place of the one-way mirror was an image of what the camera saw, and at the opposite side was a single door, a portal, to what John thought would be the security network beyond.

Also in the room was an icon that looked like a ghoul in a police officer's uniform and wearing black shades. It held what looked like an assault rifle, the same kind the outside ghoul was carrying. John could not tell if it was even looking at him or not, but when it took no action against him he figured he was in the clear.

Dropping his enhanced forms, John analyzed the ghoul officer icon. Despite the pounding in his head he was able to see it was an agent program armed with a black hammer program.

The agent did not even twitch.

Ignoring the agent, John touched the icon of the outside image and pulled away a second copy. Like he had done times before he took over the image that everyone would see from the camera, what would be recorded, and applied his will to it to edit out whoever came into view. The second image would give him alone an unaltered view of what the camera saw.

Still the agent ignored John, even as he went to the portal to try and move on to the security network.

"How're you doing?" he heard Hunter ask.

"Done with the back camera," John said, "But either they're good or just lucky with the network. Gotta hack everything individually."

"We're moving into position now." Hunter said, "Morph's gonna let the rest of your drones out. You follow along with them, wirelessly, and keep your body back at the vehicles. You can use my car if you want."

"Okay." John said, feeling disappointed he was going to be left out of the action. He stayed on his motorcycle anyway.

Keeping a connection to the camera he shifted himself back to Ravage. He planned on using the military Doberman drone as a central command as he guided the other drones.

Once the drones were on the street, John commanded them to follow the others, to take their cues from Hunter as far as moving stealthfully. As they fell in line behind her, John noticed she was carrying her Steyr AUG-CSL again, built like an assault rifle.

Slowly and carefully they made their way towards the school. The streets were empty as everyone crossed them. Soon they were at the school's back doors.

Morph went straight to the lock at the door, pulling out a set of tools to crack open the case. Once that was done he pulled out another device and connected it to key wires.

"How long's this gonna take?" Billy asked, his arm blades twitching in and out.

"Depends on how good the lock is." Morph replied, speaking much more quietly than the overanxious razorboy.

Finally a green light appeared in the maglock, and John could hear a click as it disengaged. Soon everyone was inside.

Ravage's tactical software started mapping the inside of the school, and even seemed to take the sensor feeds from the other drones in John's network. This was added to the exterior map that Ravage had already made.

"Morph, take the gym." Hunter said, "We'll check the rest of the place."

The two Soldats, Hound and Tracks, were paired up and instructed to cover Morph as he snuck off to the left. All of the drones had their guns set to short bursts only, except for Hot Spot as its laser weapon could only fire single shots.

Morph was the first to meet any ghouls as he opened the gym doors, and they looked quite surprised to see him. He was lightning fast as he lashed out at one of the ghouls with a hard, high kick. The drones paired up on the other ghoul, and a burst of three rounds from each was enough to drop the ghoul.

"Bunch 'o ork women in the gym." John said over their network, reporting what he saw from the drone's eyes. There were many cots spaced about the gym, each with an ork woman in a hospital smock. They looked like they were in pretty bad shape, like anyone kept prisoner in bad conditions would be looking their best.

"Roger." Hunter replied.

Through Ravage's sensors he saw a ghoul come out of a classroom. Like the others he wore a camouflage suit and carried an assault rifle. Hunter must have been expecting him as he took several rounds to the chest.

From another room came a ghoul, and to John's amazement that ghoul's assault rifle seemed to crumple. Billy rushed this ghoul, blades extended. The astonished ghoul tried to jump back from Billy, but he managed to skewer the ghoul through his chest with both sets of blades.

"Could use a little help here." Morph said as he and the ghoul seemed to dance about in a fist fight.

Hound and Tracks were tracking the two, waiting for a clear shot against the ghoul.

"Drop!" John yelled to Morph.

Morph kicked his own feet out from under himself. As soon as he was clear, both Soldats shot the ghoul. Like the first one, he too fell and did not get back up.

To save a little stress on juggling nodes, John cut his connection to the outside security camera.

Hunter and the others made a slow progression through the other side of the school. She and Ravage caught a two more ghouls by surprise, both unloading a short burst into each. Ravage's target looked much worse, like the ghoul had tried smothering a fragmentation grenade with her body.

"Shit." cussed Hunter, and John saw why. A roughly humanoid mass of fire materialized ahead of them.

The elemental lashed out at the closest person to it, Billy. The razorboy surprisingly did not have a dumbfounded look on his face as he tried jumping back. The stream of fire still hit him, burning his leather jacket and dirty white shirt with ease.

Right away his drones wanted to shoot at the fire elemental, but John told them to hold their fire. Chances were pretty good that their bullets would be useless against it.

"Be gone!" Valkyrie yelled, holing out an empty hand like she was demanding that the elemental stop what it was doing.

The spirit seemed to waver a little, but it remained. Ignoring the others it went after Billy again with a lash of fire.

"Fuck!" yelled Billy as he tried to evade the strike again. It hit him even harder, incinerating the back of his leather jacket as he tried to run from the spirit.

"Val?" Hunter asked uneasily.

Valkyrie sounded like she was muttering something. An explosion from somewhere else in the school did not sound promising, but at least the fomori did not seem distracted when she once again yelled, "Be gone!"

Like a child blowing out the candles of a birthday cake, the fire elemental disappeared.

Valkyrie dropped to her knees, breathing hard.

"Took your time, bitch." muttered Billy as he stood. His jacket and shirt were in ruins and still smoldering, so he simply ripped off what remained of them and kicked them off to the side. Underneath these John saw what Ravage identified as an armored vest.

"I don't like this." Hunter said, not really looking at Billy.

"Bitch owes me a new jacket." Billy said, glaring at Valkyrie.

"You're the one who didn't get a fireproof jacket." John countered. At least his black leather jacket had some fire resistant treatment to it.

Ravage's motion sensor barely gave John enough time to yell, "Duck!"

Hunter dropped to the ground, throwing her assault rifle ahead of herself. Valkyrie just let herself fall to the floor.

Even John's drones were relatively quick to drop to their bellies as two more ghouls popped out from further down the hall. Rumble and Frenzy both fired a grenade from their underbarrel launchers at two ghouls that had just exposed themselves.

Both ghouls shot a spray of bullets, aiming too high to hit most of the team or John's drones. Billy, however, had done exactly the wrong thing and looked down the hallway. He apparently got hit as he came right back down again.

Then the grenades exploded, both of them a few meters behind the ghouls. They were thrown forward, both landing face first onto the aged linoleum floor.

Ravage was quick to act on its own, jumping back up onto its own four feet and spraying the ghouls with its own explosive ammo.

Among other things, the heads of both ghouls exploded like melons under a sledge hammer.

"Think we're clear?" Valkyrie asked, not moving from her impromptu bed on the floor.

"Seriously doubt it." Hunter said.

Billy groaned.

"Any idea what that explosion was?" John asked. "According to Ravage's mapping shit, it was by the front door."

"Not a clue. Leave us Rumble and Frenzy and check it out." Hunter told him.

"You can take the other two." Morph added, "I think we're fine here."

John separated Rumble and Frenzy from the other four, grouping those four and sending them to run inside the school to the front doors, with Ravage in the lead. What he saw when they got there surprised and shocked him.

The school's front double doors looked like they had been blown from their hinges, and a familiar looking earth elemental was fighting what John would've sworn was the same fire elemental Valkyrie had just dealt with. The two spirits battled at an intersection of three hallways.

What shocked John was seeing Mina lying on the floor behind her daemonic earth elemental. The pentagram marking on its chrome armored chest was all too familiar, shining in the orange firelight as it bashed aside the apparently weaker fire elemental.

As fast as his thoughts could fly John sent orders to his drones to defend Mina and ignore her elemental, releasing the limiter on their weapons.

In a flash John's mind was back into his own body. Running purely on reflex, he had his motorcycle started and he was racing down the street towards the school.

The fire elemental almost looked like it would not be a problem when the earth elemental actually grabbed it and shoved it within its own body. John watched through the drone's eyes as the earth elemental fought to hold itself together, smothering the other spirit from within.

"Your spirit won't do you, little girl." John heard a haggard voice say through his drones.

Acting on its own, Ravage bounded towards Mina, turning when it reached the intersection. There it saw a ghoul standing several meters away, with many more coming up behind him. The speaker looked better dressed and well in control of himself, but the horde behind him looked like feral ghouls, those that were driven insane by their transformation.

"Shit! Fuck!" John cussed aloud as he approached the school. He gunned the engine, heading straight for the stairs to the main entrance as he sent a new order to his drones.

The speaker ghoul noticed the drones just in time as Ravage and the other three drones started firing down the hallway. Bullets flew down the hallway as the ghoul ducked, bouncing off a glowing aura that surrounded him.

The wrecked doors offered no resistance to John's heavy motorcycle as he plowed right through them, the sound of them shattering drowned out by the volume of automatic fire from five of the drones. Metal screeched on linoleum, tearing the floor as he slammed on the breaks. The armored ghoul looked genuinely surprised to see him.

"Keep your claws off her!" John yelled, pulling his Hatamoto II. The shot missed as the ghoul rolled away, blowing a small crater into the floor. "Fuck!" he cussed, dropping the pistol.

"Cypher, what the hell's going on?" asked Hunter over their network.

"Ass kicking!" John yelled back, pulling his two Predators. Lethal ammo was chambered just in time for him to add to the cacophony. He aimed for the armored ghoul, emptying his pistol's magazines.

The Predators automatically switched to nonlethal ammo when the first magazines ran out, but John kept firing. By the time John realized these were also empty there were no more ghouls living ghouls to shoot at.

John was on edge. His skin tingled, his ears itched as he listened for the slightest hint of deception from the ghouls. His drones seemed to pick up his agitation, those that still had ammo sweeping their guns from one ghoul's body to the next.

Ravage's motion sensor alerted John to someone's approach from their side. Spinning, he brought his Predators to bear on the person.

Hunter froze in her tracks, hands up and holding her Steyr. "Easy there, kiddo." she said calmly.

John loosed a breath he did not realize he was holding, and suddenly his pistols felt very heavy in his hands. They clattered to the floor when his hands fell to his sides.

Dropping her hands, Hunter walked up slowly. "Just coming to make sure you're alright." Then she looked down the hallway. "Holy shit!"

"Everything alright?" asked Morph, jogging up from behind Hunter. "Shee-it!" he cussed when he saw the carnage, "What the fuck happened here?"

"Uh, a thousand rounds of ammo?" John asked back.

"I'll say." commented Hunter.

"Shit!" cussed John when he remembered seeing Mina. He nearly fell off his motorcycle trying to rush to her side.

Mina looked like she had taken the brunt of some kind of spell. She almost looked like she was perfectly fine, but John could smell ozone near her when he got close, painfully falling to his knees and sliding into her. She groaned when his knee hit her side.

"Firefly?" asked Morph, "What the hell's she doing here?"

Before John realized it, Hunter was at Mina's side. Her cybernetic hand looked like it was hitting key spots, like Hunter was checking Mina's vitals or something. "At least she's alive." Hunter said.

"Think she caused that explosion you guys were talking about?" Morph asked.

"There was this elemental." John said, his hand shaking as he placed it on Mina's shoulder. "Earth. Hers, I know it was."

"You've seen her conjure it before?" asked Hunter.

John nodded.

"Where's our cars?" asked Morph.

"What? Uh, oh." John said softly when he realized their vehicles were back where he left them. "I'll call 'em." he said.

"I'll take care of 'em." Hunter said, standing. "Morph, you go check on the patient and get her ready with the others. I'll bring the ambulance around to the gym doors so we can load 'em up."

"Got it." Morph said, trotting off.

"She still not awake?" John heard Hunter asked.

"Huh?"

Hunter said nothing as she knelt beside them again. "Sixteen ork women in all." she said, looking down at Mina, "At least three of them were the ones we're looking for."

Mina groaned.

"Sleeping beauty wakes." Hunter said, and John noticed a gentle smile on her face. "Take it easy, Firefly, we got them."

"Ow." Mina said painfully.

"There you are." John heard Valkyrie say. "Whoa." she added, apparently seeing the hallway of dead ghouls.

"How're we doing with the women?" asked Hunter.

"Crammed a little tight, but we can get them all." Valkyrie told them. "Dumb dumb's gonna live, too."

"Dumb dumb?" Mina asked weakly.

"Billy." Hunter said.

"I yell 'duck!' and he looks up." John said with a weak grin.

Mina smiled a little.

"I think we can make room for one more in your car." Valkyrie said.

"No." Mina quickly said, "No car." She grabbed John's hand, squeezing it with more strength than he expected her to have.

"I'll take her." John said.

Hunter sighed.

"She doesn't look too hurt." Valkyrie said, "Might be okay."

"Alright." Hunter relented. "Just take it slow, and be really extra careful."

Mina sat alone on his motorcycle just long enough for John to collect his pistols. She still looked quite wobbly as she kept her balance by herself, relaxing once John was situated behind her.

Together John and Hunter helped Mina to her feet. She leaned heavily on John as they walked over to his motorcycle. If it had not been for the gyroscope John had added it would have fallen over when John rushed to Mina's side. As it was it was still upright on its own two wheels, engine still idling.

John let the motorcycle carry them home, his drones running in escort. Mina leaned back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her as they went.

Mina refused to leave John's side as the drones were left at their home. She seemed to recover some, and was able to weakly hold onto John from behind as they left together.

They took their time taking a tunnel under the border into the CAS sector, and about an hour later were pulling into the DocWagon hospital Brent Fuller had asked them to bring the ork women.

The others were already there, and it looked like the last of the ork women were being unloaded from the fake ambulance. Everyone except for Billy was outside, talking.

"Ah, glad you could make it." Brent said as John pulled up. "And who's this?"

"An unexpected surprise." Hunter said. "She and Cypher are partners, but she was supposed to be resting and not gallivanting around the Warrens."

"Sorry." Mina softly said. John could feel her press her face into his back like she was trying to avoid looking at Hunter.

"So, as we were discussing?" Brent asked.

"Price of the ambulance." Hunter said.

"Right," Brent said, "I think we were settling for ninety."

"I think we can call that good." Morph said.

Brent waved his hands like he was typing something on an AR keyboard. He then pulled out a chip from his commlink and handed it to Morph.

"Oh, almost forgot." Brent said when he looked at John again. A few more mid air taps and John got a transfer of four thousand nuyen.

"I guess we're set?" John asked.

"Yup." Hunter said.

"That we are." Brent added, "And you'll be forgiven any crimes you've done to DocWagon as well."

"Okay." John said sleepily.

"Can we go home now?" Mina asked.

"Almost." Morph said, and John's commlink received a transfer of twenty thousand more nuyen.

"What's this?" John asked.

"Your share of the loot." Morph said, "Sure you can use it to buy more ammo for what you spent."

"Oh, yeah." John said.

"Do I wanna know how much ammo?" Brent asked.

"Looked like a thousand rounds assorted ammo, from the looks of the dead ghouls." Hunter said.

"Extra explosive, mostly." John added.

"And over two dozen dead ghouls for the effort." Hunter said.

"Well, I'll certainly remember this." Brent said, "You can call me anytime if you think I can be of help."

"See ya." John said, waving weakly as he turned around and left the DocWagon hospital.

An hour and a coyote trail later they were home again.

"I'm really sorry if I messed things up." Mina said softly as she climbed off of John's motorcycle.

"Is okay, I s'pose." John said as he turned off the motorcycle. "Just glad you're…"

Mina was right up next to John, and before he could say anything she had her arms wrapped tightly around him.

"… okay." John managed to finish saying, slowly putting his arms around her.

He wondered if things were going to go back to normal now, or be completely different.

Only time would tell.


	16. Run 16 : Primal Forces

Run 16 : Primal Forces (based on the mission written by Eric Boivin; updated 2013/04/07)

Mina's first night back had turned out weird. She had apparently missed John so much she was insistent that they spend her first night back together. That had also meant him sleeping in her room, and she was not going to take 'No' for an answer.

Mina's room, or lodge as she put it, was not what John expected. He had expected to see AR posters of Mercurial and other musicians Mina liked, and just other girly stuff. Instead the cheap do-it-yourself shelving, what came with the place, was laden with a variety of pagan looking statuettes, a dozen different black pentagram disks in display holders meant for decorative plates, and other things he could not quite figure out. The various pentagram disks had been the most interesting, each done in a different color and each in different writing. At least John figured it was writing of a sorts within the circle of each pentagram.

That night had been spent in her room. John did not get much sleep as Mina held on tight to him like he was a life sized teddy bear. He never asked her about it, but figured Mina had really missed him over the two weeks they were apart.

The next day was a little different. Mina simply sat on the floor and watched him while he did some little maintenance stuff on his drones, like checking the actions of the machineguns and giving the barrels a gentle cleaning. She never said anything, just sitting quietly as she watched.

Sometime after lunch John sent a text to Lady Jade with an order for a lot of ammo and a pair of Ares MP-LMGs for Hound and Tracks. He found they ran out of ammo faster than he liked when they were at the Farm, and the MP-LMGs would help fix that.

Monday was almost the same, though with a trip into the city in search of some high quality cameras to upgrade what was in his motorcycle. Their search ended at a Hardware, Etc. store near the Hub. Twenty-five hundred nuyen later he had himself two top-notch cameras and a high end radar system he could install in his Katana-11 in place of the one that had been destroyed weeks ago. Mina had been so close to John throughout their trip that had John not already figured he really liked her he would have been really annoyed. That evening was spent much like the day before, with John working to replace the cameras and install the radar, and Mina sitting quietly and watching.

Wednesday was the first of the month, and at eight in the morning the troll landlord, larger than life and twice as ugly, was promptly at their front door. John was glad that Mina stayed in her room while the troll was there to collect the rent. He really did not like how the troll had looked at her the month before.

Most of Wednesday and all of Thursday were lazy days for the two. Trids and VR games.

Lady Jade sent a message to John early Friday about his order. She had managed to get the ammo, but not the machineguns. He and Mina went out to meet her to collect them, and together they spent the afternoon reloading the ammo boxes and magazines of his drones. John figured Mina really liked him a lot as she helped him, looking a little bored as she pushed grenades into Frenzy's Antioch-2 grenade launcher.

Friday evening was spent watching the Denver Ghosts at New York when both of their commlinks chimed with a new text message. Mina groaned her annoyance but did not move from her cuddled up spot next to John while he mentally brought up the message. The message read:

**» **Oy chumr. Bring UR ass bout rite now Goodfriends, in da CAS area. Diesel B fun.

"Oh god." groaned John as he tried to make sense of the message tagged from an ork fixer named Miguel. "I'd rather he call than try to type."

"What is it?" Mina asked.

"Time to work. I think." John said as he helped push Mina to her feet. "Someplace called Goodfriends, I think."

He had been liking the quiet time with Mina, and she was not holding onto him with a death grip as the game played on.

"What kind of place is that?" she asked.

"Bar." John said, "I think. Kind of place Billy hangs out."

Mina groaned.

John left the game feed running, shoving the ARO off to the side while he and Mina went to their rooms to change for work. Considering where the meet was, dressing up was certainly not required. John put on his usual armored bodysuit, his six pack of handguns, and his sword belt.

Once they were ready, with Mina wearing her usual street gear, they left for one of the tunnel entrances to take an underground path into the CAS sector. Almost an hour later they were pulling up to the parking lot for Goodfriends.

Goodfriends was not exactly in the nicest part of the CAS sector, though it was due east of the Hub on East Colfax Avenue. The bar, club, or whatever you wanted to call it, had more lives than a cat as it had gone through countless owners and reincarnations over the years. In the least it was well known as neutral territory, a "demilitarized zone" for people of all types to relax. Part of the neutrality of the place was no cameras, not even for Goodfriends itself.

It was almost 20.00 when John and Mina got there, and the parking lot in front was crowded and hopping with activity. There were many people out front looking like they were trying to hook up with someone else, one of the few constants of the place as well as the foundation of its name. There was no real dress code for this place, and it varied from the joygirl off the street to the wageslave fresh from the office as for how people were dressed.

The building itself that made up Goodfriends looked like the seedy biker bar you might find on some forgotten highway, having stood the test of time for twenty or more years. Of course the place had been kept up, but to John it looked like it was not a major effort on the part of the owners.

At least one person was not too difficult to spot among the crowd outside. Hoss, a tall and massive troll, was carefully working his way towards the main door to Goodfriends. With a tight grip on Mina's hand John led the way through the parking lot.

"Hey big guy!" John called out as they got closer, "Duke it out with any corp managers lately?"

Hoss turned their way, bringing up balled fists like he was ready to fight. His expression lightened once he saw them. "Hey kid, little late for shade."

"Awe shit." he heard Billy cuss. He was amazed he did not smell the razorboy. Maybe he had his annual bath?

"You get a message from Miguel, too?" Hoss asked.

"That was a message?" John asked, tilting his head to one side, "Thought that was Billy's impersonation of a genius." He grinned.

Hoss chuckled. "He ain't out here, so we're going in to try and find him."

Billy laughed. "Good luck!"

John and Mina walked with the others anyway, and stopped before they got to the door. Outside was a bouncer checking IDs. When a man with a rather young looking elfin girl for a date tried to slip the bouncer a bribe, the man promptly got a firsthand taste of the parking lot.

"Nyea-nyea!" Billy went as he and Hoss went on.

"Jackass." Mina muttered aloud.

John and Mina shared a look, and it was almost as if they both had the same ideas at the same time.

Mina suddenly disappeared from sight, but John could feel her grip tighten on his hand. Glancing down, he also could not see his own hand. Their commlinks likewise went into hidden mode, not appearing to anyone else's who did not have the software or skills to find them.

As quickly and carefully as they could, they rushed for the door. They caught up to Billy, who was third in line to get in and right in front of Hoss.

John paused long enough to try and force his way into Billy's commlink. It was not hard at all as the razorboy still had not upgraded, or even updated, his software. From within Billy's commlink John superimposed his own fake ID.

The bouncer stopped Billy with an outstretched, and obviously chrome, arm. "Sorry kid, you ain't getting' in."

"What?" Billy asked.

"What's the hold-up?" Hoss asked.

"ID says he's twelve." the bouncer told them. "No juveniles allowed."

"I ain't a juv… juvenile." Billy said with as much conviction as he could muster. John grinned big at having caught the razorboy completely off guard with this.

"Hey, can ya at least let me in?" Hoss asked.

The bouncer looked at an ARO that was visible only to him. "Sure."

Hoss pushed his way around Billy, who had now started trying to convince the bouncer he was not a young troll who had surgery to change his looks. The troll hit the door firmly, giving it an effortless shove as he walked in.

Was it John's imagination, or did Hoss hold the door open a little longer than he should have? No matter, he and Mina were quick to slip past the bouncer and Billy, and through the door.

The inside of the bar looked as decrepit as the outside. John decided to log off from Billy's commlink, though he did wonder somewhat what kind of explanation he would come up with once the bouncer saw the ID change.

"Figured you'd do something like that." Hoss said. He did not even look down at them, and instead was scanning the bar for someone. John figured it was Miguel. Being a meter and a half tall had its advantages sometimes, but now made it hard to try and find an ork with a gold plated tusk amongst the other bar patrons.

Checking their hands, John saw that Mina had dropped her invisibility spells.

"_Don't think they'll care now that we're in._" Mina silently said.

"_Hope you're right._" John replied.

"There he is." Hoss said, working his way around the other patrons. John and Mina kept as close as they could to him.

Once they got closer, Miguel was not all that hard to spot. Especially when the ork stood up on his bench seat in a corner booth. There were about half a dozen other tough looking characters there with him, and it looked like they were trying to get his attention like he was a rock star.

"Yo boyz, you'ze time will come, but dis time it's for dese chaps." Miguel said as he jumped back down into his seat.

One of the toughs, a dwarf, gave John and Mina a sour look as he walked off with the others. They did not say anything as they quickly parted ways.

"Hey, no kids." barked a deep and gruff voice just as Mina began sliding onto the bench next to Hoss.

"Dese kidz're 'sposed ta be 'ere." Miguel said.

It did not seem to make a difference as John found himself hoisted up by the collar of his jacket. Metal hard knuckles dug into the back of his neck as he was spun around to look face to face with a rather large ork.

"Put him down!" Mina yelled.

Large may have been an understatement. Looking eye-to-eye with the tanned ork, John found himself dangling at least half a meter the ork's heavy looking and riveted work boots. His arms were as thick as John's waistline, his eyes concealed behind mirrored reflective covers, and his expression was like it was chiseled out of stone, then hit with a ten kilo sledgehammer a few times. The ork's nose looked like it had been broken a few times and did not properly heal each time, now looking a bit mushed and flat compared to a normal nose.

He was also smarter than Billy by a long shot. A frantic scan turned up only a single commlink in a left leg pocket. Whatever cyber this ork had he had clearly disabled its wireless functionality.

"Thought you'd have trouble at the door, kid," came a familiar, and welcomed, voice, "but I didn't think you'd get it inside as well."

"Maybe if you can get this guy to let go?" John asked. He reached behind his head to try and pry some of the ork's fingers apart and quickly found out just what kind of iron clad grip the ork had.

"Hey, big guy." Hunter said, "You might wanna drop him before his girlfriend gets mad."

"Girlfriend?" the ork asked, looking down at Mina. Did he not notice how girly Mina's light blue jacket was?

"Kids ain't supposed to be in the bar." the ork said, now looking at Hunter. He did not sound like he was any smarter than Billy, but apparently had a really good memory.

"Cypher's part of the job." Hunter said, "And so's Firefly. You don't wanna piss off our hacker and mage, do you?"

"Just when I had to leave Ravage at home." John muttered.

"Yeah, Crunch, dey'z 'sposed ta be 'ere." Miguel added.

Without a word, Crunch dropped John.

"Good boy." Hunter said as John scooted into the booth.

"Fuckin' bouncer." muttered Billy as he walked up.

"Call him an asshole, too?" asked Hoss.

Billy said nothing as he sat down.

For whatever reason he had, Crunch was the last to sit. Thankfully he was at the other side of the table from John.

"Iz been told by da boss ta give dis package ta a team." Miguel said, pulling out a plain and unmarked cardboard box and setting it on the table.

"So, what's the job?" Hunter asked as Miguel stood on the bench and jumped over the table.

"Dunno." Miguel said, "Da boss didn't tell me nuttin."

"And we don't even get to haggle?" Billy asked as Miguel walked off. "Shit."

This certainly was the weirdest job meeting John had ever been to. Noticing Mina looking at him, John looked back and shrugged.

"Anything magical?" Hunter asked.

Mina looked like she was staring at the cardboard box, like she was trying to will it to open itself and dance. After a little bit she said, "No, nothing."

Sighing, Hunter reached out for the box and opened it. "Weirdest Red X drop I've ever had."

"Red X?" Mina asked.

Hunter pulled out an old looking CMT Clip model commlink. This was the kind of commlink parents would give their kids as it was simple to use and hard to abuse. Even the cheap commlink John openly wore was a cheap Meta Link, and he thought it was a great way to make others think he was just a kid and not a killer hacker.

"Red X is what runners call commlinks that just show up on your doorstep one day." Hunter said, "No one really gets any idea how or why, but the people who get 'em usually get little requests." She fiddled with the commlink. "Looks like this one's off."

"Well, turn it on!" Billy demanded.

Hunter glared at the razorboy, but she turned it on anyway. "Cypher?" she said, showing John the display when the commlink had booted it.

The graphics were incredibly simple, and the display was merely a text message to contact a commcode. Right away John did a trace search on the commcode.

"It goes off to some private server." John said when he got the trace back, "One of those black servers we use."

"So our benefactor likes his or her privacy." Hunter said.

"Helpful." muttered Billy, "Why not fuckin' hack it?"

"Why not shut up?" Hunter asked. Instead of asking John to try and break into the server she hit the call button instead.

A second later a message appeared. It read:

******» **Hello.  
******» **I'll be your contact for this mission.  
**********» **This is the only way you'll be able to communicate with me, so please follow the rules.  
******» **This will be a retrieve and deliver job.  
******» **The pay for this job is 5000¥ each.  
******» **Consider the contents of the package an added gift.  
******» **Are you in? (Y / N)**  
**

"Yeah, this is so Red X." Hunter said.

"So what's it say?" asked Billy. He looked really super impatient.

"This link's the only way we can talk to the boss." Hunter said, holding up the little Clip, "Job's a retrieve and deliver, and we'll be paid five thousand nuyen each for the job."

"What? Delivery? Fuck this." Billy said. "Move!" he told Crunch, and looked like he was pushing the ork aside so he could get out of the booth.

"You bailin' on us?" Hoss asked.

Crunch sat back down on the bench.

"I ain't no fuckin' delivery boy!" Billy called out as he headed for the door.

"Guess he's out." Hunter said, looking inside the box.

"Well, I'm in." John said. Work was work, and at least a delivery job was rather straight forward.

"Me too." Mina added right away.

"Better than doing nothing." Hoss said, "I'm up for this."

"Yeah, sure." Crunch said.

Hunter pulled out a credstick and plugged it into her commlink. "Wonder if an extra thousand would've made a difference?" she mused. "Well, looks like we're gonna get a little extra."

John's commlink beeped with a transfer of twelve hundred nuyen to his account.

Crunch grunted. Or did he snort? John could not quite tell.

"_He makes me nervous._" Mina silently said.

"_He'd squish us both if he fell on us._" John replied.

"_His aura's… toxic. It's really dim._"

"Well, guess the rest of us are in." Hunter said. John saw her type in:

******» **5Y, 1N

Seconds later there was a reply:

******» **His loss.  
**********» **Take the key.  
******» **Go to 6555 Schneider Way, Arvada, PCC. Parking Space #541.  
**********» **Contact me then.

Hunter sighed. "Shit."

"What is it?" Hoss asked.

"Gotta go to Arvada." Hunter said. "Guess this's a car key, based on the message."

If the Aurora Warrens were the skid marked undershorts of Denver, the Arvada Barrens of the defunct Ute sector were the armpit. John generally avoided that part of the Zone when he could, and had been there a few times on business only.

"I don't want to babysit." Crunch flatly said.

"You won't have to." Hunter told him. "She's a magician, don't forget."

"Sooner we get there, sooner we can leave." Hoss said, pushing the table away as he stood to leave.

As soon as they were off the bench Mina took his hand. John thought he felt something more, but when he looked to Mina he saw she was gone. So were their hands when he looked, but he could feel her hand in his.

The two managed to sneak their way back outside again, hiding between Hoss and Hunter as they walked right out the front door.

Crunch apparently did not have his own vehicle, so he ended up riding with Hoss in his SAMAG Vinnig.

Hunter hosted a private conference call for everyone. She then led the way as they drove out onto Colfax Avenue. She was even able to help John and Mina get across the border when the guard was about to question the idea of two juveniles out so late on a Friday night. Though the names of their IDs did not match she managed to convince the border guard that they were related.

They continued east until they reached Wadsworth Boulevard, and there they went north. Wherever they were going, Hunter seemed to know right where it was.

It was past sunset by the time they reached their destination, which turned out to be a large, five story apartment complex. It looked like it had been there for a century, renovated time and again over the years. There were many lights on in the windows, and John could feel an overwhelming pressure of WiFi signals. It looked like it would be a great place to hide out in for a major hacking job.

"We'll have to circle around." Hunter told them.

At least they did not have to go too far. Just on the other side of the building was a parking lot for the residents. Just beyond that was another parking lot that looked like was intended for visitors. Hunter drove slowly as they looked for the specific parking space. When she found it, John's jaw dropped.

In space #541 was a GMC minivan, rust and institution green in color though it obviously had been painted and repaired several times. When he did not recognize the model of the van, John did a general search on minivans.

"Is this it?" Mina asked.

"Sure looks like it." Hunter said, getting off of her motorcycle. She slowly walked around the rust bucket on wheels.

The results John got did not make him feel good. "Shit," he cussed, "this fucker's over fifty years old! No autonomy, no dog brain, no way it could even drive itself if we need it to."

"Could you watch what you say?" asked Hunter, "I think there're parents here that don't want their kids hearing it."

"Like the trid's any better." John muttered.

"What've we got?" asked Hoss through an open window in his truck.

"An ancient van that fits this key." Hunter replied. "And there's only one seat for a regular sized person in it. It's so old it's actually a stick shift."

"A what?" Hoss asked.

"Hundred percent manual control." Hunter answered.

"We got the van. Now what?" asked Crunch.

"Just asked our mystery boss." Hunter told them just as the commlink beeped with a new message. "Says we gotta take it to the Dewey Pavilion at the Two Ponds Wildlife Refuge. 'Bout five K away from here."

"North?" John asked.

"Yup." Hunter replied.

John shivered. Meant more time in Arvada.

"Well, I certainly can't drive it if the seat's as small as I think it is." Hoss said.

"I can't drive it." Crush added.

"Looks like I'm driving it, then." Hunter said.

"Can you?" Hoss asked.

"Drove an old six-by-six before." Hunter told them, "This should be a piece of cake."

"Should I grab your bike?" Hoss asked.

"Both of them." Hunter said, "Kids'll ride with you."

"Uh, pass?" Mina tentatively asked.

Hunter walked around to stand behind the minivan. "You two alone on a motorcycle at this hour is asking for trouble." she told them, "Especially if you get spotted by PuebSec. Someone's bound to notice you two and realize you're underaged after curfew."

"Can't we ride with you?" Mina asked, "I don't mind sitting on the floor."

"What is it?" Hunter asked. She looked concerned now, and not quite like an angry mother.

John sent a data stream to Hunter's implanted commlink to connect her to the private connection he and Mina shared. "_Private conference._" he silently said.

"_It's the big guy._" Mina said. "_I don't wanna ride in the same car as him._"

"_Crunch? He's just a cybered up ork._" Hunter replied, "_Isn't Billy just as chromed?_"

"_It's… different. I dunno._"

"_Something different about his aura? Something freaky?_" Hunter asked.

"_She said something about it being toxic earlier._" John added.

"_Something don't feel right about him?_" Hunter asked.

Mina nodded vigorously.

Hunter sighed. "Alright, kids ride with me." she said aloud.

Mina smiled big.

John did not have to cut the connection as Hunter did it herself.

"You sure it's alright?" Hoss asked as he climbed out of his truck.

"We'll probably be better off sticking to the streets where we don't have to go too fast." Hunter said, "I doubt this rust bucket'll go fast enough for the highways anyway."

"Wow." went Mina.

Turning to see where Mina was looking, John saw Hoss hefting his black Katana-11 to put into the back of his truck. Mina seemed to be quite impressed at how effortlessly the troll held the heavy motorcycle.

"You do something to your bike, kid?" Hoss asked as he pushed the motorcycle the length of his truck's bed.

"Few new cameras and radar." John said, "Why?"

"Noticed some repair work." Hoss said as he picked up Hunter's motorcycle next.

"Um, yeah. It got shot last month." John said, speaking a little more loudly as the minivan's engine rumbled to life. "I think I got the guy who shot it."

"We're ready to go. Get in." Hunter said.

Mina climbed in first through the passenger side door, and John was right behind her.

The inside of the van looked as old, beat up, and repaired as the outside. The whole back part of the minivan was covered in sheet metal, and the siding went high enough to completely block the windows.

"Try to make yourselves comfortable behind my seat." Hunter said.

The back seats of Hoss's truck were looking quite appealing now, compared to sitting on rusted steel. Regardless of that now, John took off his sword belt and planted himself right behind Hunter's seat and leaned against the minivan's side. Mina was soon right beside him.

"So why'd you give in so easy?" John asked once it felt like they were well underway.

"Don't forget I've got a magician for a roommate." Hunter told them. "She's blind and uses the astral to see from time to time. She's met a few people that made her feel uneasy. She never said she could explain it. Just gave her the creeps."

"Kinda how I felt?" Mina asked softly.

John slipped his arm around her, and she leaned into him.

"Never worked trying to argue it with her," Hunter continued, "and when Firefly was looking like she was feeling the same as my roommate, I figured it wouldn't be worth trying to argue with her."

They sat in relative silence as Hunter drove. Just after she made a left hand turn the commlink beeped with a new message.

"Cypher, can you get that?" asked Hunter.

"Sure." John said. He had to scramble a bit to grab the commlink from Hunter's outstretched hand. Once he had it he let himself fall right back where he was sitting. Hoss's back seat once again was feeling more appealing.

Hitting the accept button, the commlink displayed a new message:

******» **Opposition is highly possible, but take care to avoid triggering any alarms.  
**********» ****Once the field is clear, contact me before entering the pavilion.****  
**

"Well? What's it say?" asked Hunter.

"Opposition's possible. Take care to avoid alarms." John paraphrased. "Contact me before entering the pavilion."

"Like the warning. Hate the advice." Hunter said

"I'd love to know who the ass is." Hoss added from over their private network.

"Kids needed to know." Crunch said.

"Kids know more than you think." Hunter said. "We're gonna do a drive by first, try and scope the place out."

"Should I send out Laserbeak?" John asked.

"Not a bad idea." Hoss said.

"Yeah. Should be enough coverage to get a good range with it. And you check out the astral part too, Firefly. Park's out on the left." Hunter added.

Mina scooted aside long enough for John to pull out the little yokujin drone from his pocket. As soon as it was awake and hovering on its own she was right back at his side again.

John gave the data bomb its passcode and slid into VR to ride inside of the drone. At his command it flew out an open window. He loaded up an icon of a captain's chair to sit in, then resculpted the front to look like the large open windows of a sci-fi spaceship. The windows themselves were a view through the drone's sensors.

Laserbeak flew on its own with guidelines set by John to keep hidden.

"Hoss, we'll pass the park and circle into a parking lot close by." Hunter said.

"Not too far behind you." Hoss said.

Laserbeak zipped high across the street, and then dipped low to do its best to fly over the grass next to the sidewalk. John prodded it to fly to a set of trees in the park's parking lot, and Laserbeak obliged.

"What're you seeing, kiddo?" Hunter asked.

John waited for Laserbeak to land, prompting it from one branch to the next until he had a clear view of the park's entrance. "Two guys at the only entrance in." John said as Laserbeak turned to look around. "There's also only one car, with two guys in it. And more walking around." he added.

"Notice anything unusual?" Hunter asked.

"Uh, not sure." John said, "Take a look." He snapped a screen shot from Laserbeak's camera and sent it to her.

After a moment Hunter said, "Long coats, so they're armored, and no idea what they may be packing underneath."

"Nothing really big, hopefully." Hoss said.

"Maybe." Hunter said, "Cypher's got a Hatamoto II for backup, literally."

"And I use door buster rounds." John added.

"Hopefully they're not good shots." Hoss commented.

"There's no magic around." Mina said.

"Nice advantage for us." Hoss said.

"So the magician can put them to sleep?" Crunch asked.

"Maybe one or two." Mina said.

"And I've counted nine total so far." John added.

"Think you could handle the two at gate?" Hunter asked.

"I think so."

"What about their network?" Hunter asked.

"Oh, shit." John said, realizing he had not even tried seeking out commlinks. At least Laserbeak was still well within range of his technomancer abilities, so John figured that he would be able to find any of the commlinks the guards were carrying.

"I hope you're getting on it." Hunter said.

"Yeah, yeah, just gimme a minute." John said as he scanned the airwaves. There was a lot of crap to sift through as every inhabited home nearby was awash in signals.

After a lot of sifting John managed to find one of the guard's commlink. He checked it out heavily for any kind of data bombs and other nastiness. Finding out that it looked like an off-the-shelf commlink, he went straight to a brute force attack on its firewall. Within seconds he was through.

The node's sculpting was rather basic, and a quick check showed it was connected to other commlinks. John chose one and gave it a closer look. When he found it was relatively the same, he went for a similar attack on its firewall. In seconds he was also through this firewall.

The same was true for the third and fourth nodes he hacked into, each one turning out to be another commlink of those guarding the park.

"This is gonna take forever." John said, "There's no central node. They're all cross linked with each other."

"Can you tell who you've gotten?" Hunter asked.

"No one's talkin', so no." John said.

"Forget them and go after the pavilion, then." Hunter told him, "We'll need to know what kind of security that place has."

"If any." Crunch added.

The pavilion was a much easier find, and after analyzing the crap out of it was about as easy to hack into as well. Either whatever they were supposed to get was not very important at all, or was so important that they were trying the low-key tactic to security.

About a minute later John was in every part of the pavilion's nodes that he could track down, which was a lot easier to juggle than all of the guard's commlinks.

"Security's way light." John said, "No agents to worry about, no cameras, a whole lot of no nothing."

"This feels way too easy." Hunter said.

"What're you thinking?" asked Hoss.

"That the direct approach's gonna be the best way," Hunter said, "and we'll deal with whatever shit we run into."

"And the guards?" Crunch asked.

"Got a way to knock 'em out without breaking any bones?" Hunter asked him.

"Yeah."

"Do it."

John brought himself back to reality, keeping his connection to Laserbeak and the pavilion nodes only. "So how're we doin' this?" he asked.

"Right through the front gate." Hunter told him. "You two get up here, but be careful. Firefly, put those two gate guards to sleep.

John and Mina both stood, moving to stand where the passenger seat of the van would normally have been. The door was just at the right height for John to hold onto the handle to help him keep his balance as Hunter pulled out of the parking space they had been sitting in. With his other arm he held Mina close to him so she would not fall over.

"Everyone ghosting?" Hunter asked as they got close to the park.

Everyone answered yes.

"Do it, Firefly." Hunter said as they approached the park's gate.

If John did not know better, it looked like the two guards just fell over for no reason at all. He heard Mina grunt softly as she fell to lean against him.

"You alright?" asked Hunter.

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

Hunter pulled right into a parking space as if she belonged there.

Just as John was climbing out of the van he heard two car doors close.

"You can't be here." a man said.

Figuring if they were going to try and talk their way in Hunter would have already done so, John twitched his arms to put his Morrissey Élan holdouts in his hands. Before the Japanese man even knew John was armed he was hit with two stick-n-shock bullets. The man dropped like a sack of soy beans.

"What's going on over here?" John heard another man ask, and he sounded rather angry.

The other man was still half behind the car he had been sitting in, and John shot him twice as well. Like his buddy, this man also dropped.

"Good shooting." commented Hunter.

Looking around they saw no other guards.

"Think we're okay?" asked John.

"The others never saw what hit 'em." Hoss said as he stepped out from the shadows. In his left hand was a massive longbow built troll sized, and in his right hand were three large arrows. At his back was a quiver with a mess more arrows.

"They're all sleepin'." Crunch added as he walked up from right behind Hoss. He had a bunch of handguns bundled under one arm.

"You sure about that, Crunch?" Hunter asked.

"Boy's got shock pads in his hands." Hoss said. "Saw it m'self."

"Alright then. Cypher, let our boss know we're ready to go in."

John let his holdouts slide back up his sleeves before he pulled out the Red X commlink and keyed in the message. Within seconds he got a reply:

******» **Secure the two VIPs.  
**********» ****Then, contact me once you have left the refuge.****  
**

"We're supposed to secure two VIPs, then message when we've left." John said.

"Locks on the doors?" Hunter asked.

"Nothing I can find in the node." John said.

"Looks like all their security was the guards."

"Let's just walk in, then."

The Dewey Pavilion door opened for Hunter like it was business as usual. The lobby was sparse, with an information kiosk covered in AROs about the park and environment as well as other tourist attractions. The walks were logs of fake wood, heavily lacquered to give the place an old-fashioned, cozy look.

A middle aged Asian man looked up at them. He gasped when he saw them, the commlink in his hand clattering to the floor. Before John or any of the others could say anything he fell to his knees, putting his hands behind his head and frantically saying, "Who are you? You can loot the place, just leave us alone!"

"Just keep quiet and you'll be fine." Hunter said as she walked up to him. With one foot she kicked his commlink back and well away from the man.

Just as John picked up that commlink, twin doors at the opposite side of the room opened. A sleek looking gray wolf stepped into the room, and right behind it was a giant panda. What surprised John was that the panda was standing upright on its hind legs and was holding a door open for the wolf.

"Uh oh." Hoss said, dropping his arrows to pull one from his quiver.

The wolf glared at everyone, but seemed to settle a little when the panda gently patted its head. The panda then fiddled with a device strapped to its right paw, and after a few clicks it said in a feminine voice, "Quiet Vaylor. I here. Who are men, Cheng? Do we have to wait longer for our bedtime story?"

"Cypher?" Hunter asked.

John looked at the man's commlink. The physical display was a list of children's bedtime stories. "He was looking at bedtime stories." he said.

"So where're the VIPs?" Crunch asked.

"I think we're lookin' at 'em." Hoss said.

"The animals?" Mina asked.

"I'm a panda. My name is Tai Lun. This is Vaylo." came the panda's synthetic voice.

"I think you're right." Hunter said.

John felt his shoulders drop. It did make sense. Riding in the back of a stripped out van like he had was certainly not a way you would treat a person.

"What do you want?" the Asian man, Cheng, asked.

"The animals to come with us." Hunter said. "Would you like to come for a ride with us?" she asked, looking towards the panda and wolf.

Tai Lun looked at Vaylo, then pressed a few buttons on the device on her paw. "Yes we would! It sounds like fun!" it said excitedly.

Vaylo did not look quite as thrilled as Tai Lun's synthetic voice sounded.

"N… No, you can't." Cheng said.

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice." Hunter said, "They'll be coming with us."

"You can't take them. They need special care." Cheng told them.

"Who're you?" asked Crunch.

"Z… Zhao Cheng." Cheng said. "I'm their handler, employed by…"

"Cheng come too." came Tai Lun's voice.

"Okay, we get it." Hunter said a little snippily. "Any trouble coming with us?"

"Nuh uh." Crunch said. Was he disagreeing with Hunter, or agreeing that there was no trouble with Cheng coming? John could not tell.

"You sure?" Hoss asked.

"Tai Lun and Vaylo are coming with us either way." Hunter said, "If things are easier with Cheng, then I say we take him too."

"Right, then." Hoss said, apparently agreeing with Hunter.

"C'mon." Hunter said to the animals, waving them to follow her.

John turned off Cheng's commlink before pocketing it.

Cheng seemed quite cooperative, actually talking somewhat calmly to Tai Lun and Vaylo as they headed for the doors.

"Guys, why don't you see about getting their food before we go." Hunter said.

John and Mina followed behind Hunter and the others as they walked out, with Tai Lun walking on all fours. Something seemed odd to John as they walked, and it was not the "I'm gonna rip your throat out" look Vaylo gave everyone.

"Oh my!" gasped Cheng when he saw the unconscious guards outside.

"Take it easy, they're only stunned." Hunter explained. "And don't think about trying anything. Cypher's packing more firepower than you think."

John rushed up to the van and opened the back doors. He and Mina each held one as Tai Lun climbed in first. At the shoulder Tai Lun was shorter than John by about half a meter, though hearing the minivan's shocks squeak as the giant panda reminded John that she was much more massive than him.

Tai Lun turned and dropped her rump down against the left side of the van, sitting like any typical panda John had seen in pics and trids. She tapped some buttons and the device said, "Come Vaylo."

Vaylo had a little more difficulty getting into the van, but with some scrambling and scratching of claw from his hind feet managed to make it on his own. Like how dogs do, Vaylo turned around a few times before laying down next to Tai Lun.

Last to climb in was Cheng, and he sat down opposite of Tai Lun in the back of the van.

"We got the stuff." Hoss said as he and Crunch caught up to them. Hoss had his bow slung across his back and a fat armload of bamboo stalks.

Crunch was just behind Hoss, and had a lot of objects wrapped in white paper. Cheng scooted over as the food and stuff for the animals was dumped into the back of the van. Once that was done, Hoss took both doors in hand and strongly closed them.

Laserbeak was quick to come when John called for the little drone. It zipped right to his open hand from the tree it had been hiding in. With a mental touch it went to sleep and he pocketed the drone.

"Time to get going." Hunter told them.

Mina was right behind John as he climbed into the minivan through the passenger side door. They took their same seat right behind Hunter's. This time they were rather close to Tai Lun. He had no idea what to think when he saw the giant panda tip her head and scratch a cheek with one paw.

That was when John figured out what was giving him an odd feeling about the animals when he found that they were tagged. He opted for a brute force approach to force them to switch off. In a few seconds their signals disappeared.

"We all set?" Hunter asked as she started up the minivan.

"Yeah." John said as he pulled out the Red X commlink to send a message that they were leaving the refuge.

"Yay! Trip!" cried Tai Lun.

There was a reply right away, saying:

******» **Lay low for the night.  
**********»** **I'll send new instructions after sun-up.****  
**

"Boss says to lay low, and he'll send instructions after sun-up." John said, looking up when sunrise was going to be. "'Round five-thirty-seven in the morning's sunrise."

"So what're we supposed to do for the next eight hours?" Hoss asked.

"This is fun." came Tai Lun's voice.

"Hide out someplace for a while." Hunter said, "Unless you've got a good idea where to stash a giant panda and a wolf till morning."

"Like hide and seek?" Tai Lun asked.

"Nothin' we can use." Hoss replied.

"Hope you don't mind sleeping in the vehicles. 'Cause we're gonna hide out in a parking garage." Hunter told them.

"Could be worse." John said.

"How so?" asked Hunter.

"Billy could be riding with us."

"Who is Billy? Is he a goat?" asked Tai Lun.

"Eww." went Mina.

"No, Billy's a stinky guy." John said.

"Stinky bad?" asked Tai Lun. "I don't like stinky bad. I don't think I like Billy."

"So where're we off to?" Hoss asked.

"Parking garage just off of thirty-six." Hunter said, "Should be safe there for the night."

"Could I have my commlink back, please?" Cheng asked.

"Yay! Story time!" Tai Lun cried cheerfully.

"Go ahead Cypher." Hunter said, "But do keep an eye on him."

John pulled out Cheng's commlink and turned it on. Once it was on, he hacked his way into the commlink and gave it a quick reprogramming to lock it into hidden mode and to force it to accept no connections except himself. Mentally he pushed an ARO of the commlink's display to the corner of his vision, then tossed the commlink to Cheng.

"You won't be able to get the matrix unless I allow it. I'll be watching you." John told him.

Tai Lun was completely enraptured in a story about a little girl and three bears. Vaylo, on the other hand, seemed to be keeping a close watch on John and Mina, and it was really creeping John out. The wolf's yellow eyes had gone from a "I'll rip your throat out" kind of look to a more gentle "I'll chew on your leg."

"You have Cheng's commlink secured?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John said, "It won't do anything not local if I don't let it first."

"Alright then. Why don't you two try to get some sleep." Hunter told them.

Making sure Cheng's commlink would not disconnect him under almost any circumstance he could think of, John moved so he was lying across the floor of the van behind Hunter's seat. Mina was right back at his side, draping her arm across his chest.

Neither of them were quick to fall asleep, so Mina pulled up a music playlist for the two of them to listen to. Not surprisingly it was a Maria Mercurial song that was first. After a few songs he fell asleep.

"The phone is ringing!" came Tai Lun voice rather loudly.

It was not a phone, but John's commlink, and it was doing more than just beeping with an incoming call, but pinging his brain directly. Grumbling he checked the ID and found it was blocked.

"Caller's blockin'." John muttered.

"Do what you want with it." he heard Hunter say.

Closing his eyes John mentally hit the accept icon. "Yes?" he grumpily said, his voice coming across as a dozen people speaking at once.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but are you Cypher?" an imageless voice asked.

"Yes." John replied sharply.

"I must say that you are a hard person to track down." the voice told him. "I have it on some authority that you were at the Two Ponds Wildlife Refuge earlier."

"Who are you?" John asked the voice.

"I'm sorry. Setto Karemaru." the voice said. Though his name sounded Asian to John, the lack of any accent in his English did not. "I'm calling to let you know that your continued actions against the Yakuza are quite foolish. Continuing down this path can be quite detrimental to you and your friends' health."

"And how'd you get my commcode?" John asked.

"I appreciate your value of privacy." Setto told him. For some reason John did not feel reassured. Not only had he dodged the question like a politician, but it felt like there was new code being introduced into the call.

"Yeah, I do." John said, paying a little more attention to this new code. Finding that someone was running a trace program to track down his commlink. With a virtual hand he collected the threads of data and started sending disruptive code back. "I think you don't."

"Well, you have something that doesn't belong to you." Setto said.

John sighed, and decided to take Setto quite literally. "Yeah, got lots of things too. So?"

"What is it?" asked Hunter.

"Some dumbass Yakuza guy." John said aloud.

"What's he want?"

"I think he wants the animals back."

"I want a song." Tai Lun told them.

"I'm thinking of telling the guy to fuck off." John said. He added another pulse of code to disrupt the ongoing trace.

"Can you put it more nicely than that?" Hunter asked.

"Maybe say 'Please'?" Mina suggested.

"So, can I count on your cooperation in returning what doesn't belong to you?" Setto asked.

"Fuck no." John told Setto. "What's the line? It's just business?"

"Then let's talk business." Setto said.

"Let's not." John said, "And tell your hacker that if he knows what's good for him he won't try to hack our shit."

With that he ended the call.

Cheng was occupying Tai Lun by singing the "I'm A Little Tea Pot" song. The giant panda looked rather funny as se mimicked the handle and spout.

John groaned as he dove into the settings of his cheap commlink. "Jackass makin' me reprogram my 'link." he muttered.

"What happened?" asked Hunter.

"Setto had someone trying to trace me." John said, "Gotta change the ID on my 'link now."

"So what'd you tell this Setto guy?"

John yawned once he got his commlink's setting changed. "Told 'im it's just biz." he said sleepily.

"Hey, Firefly, think you could ask a spirit to try and hide us?"

"Mmm mm." grunted Mina as she rolled over onto her side, pressing her back against John now. "Sp'rit's been doin' it." she mumbled.

"Okay. You kids can go back to sleep now."

John rolled onto his side, draping an arm over Mina as they spooned. He fell asleep during Cheng's third rendition of "I'm A Little Tea Pot."

"The phone is ringing." came Tai Lun's voice.

The Red X commlink had just barely beeped the first time with a new message.

"Shit, I know it's ringing." grumbled John as he blindly reached for the Red X.

"The phone is ringing." Tai Lun said again as the commlink chimed.

"Please be quiet!" Mina groaned, rolling over to bury her face against John's chest, clamping a hand over her exposed ear.

Once he had the commlink in hand he rolled onto his back and hit the accept button for the message. Holding it up so he could see it, it read:

******» **Bring the animals to the parking lot of Kentucky Supermarket on W. Kentucky in the PCC immediately.

"What's it say?" Hunter asked.

Still holding the Red X commlink, John let his hand fall to the van's floor. "Take the animals to Kentucky Supermarket, now." John said.

"Seriously?"

"Close 'nough."

"I'll tell Hoss and Crunch." Hunter said, "You two just try to get some rest. Got 'bout half an hour."

John checked the time on the Red X commlink before pocketing it. He saw it say it was 05.05, about half an hour before sunrise. That meant it would be just about sunrise when they actually got to the supermarket.

Sleep did not come to John, nor did Mina fall back asleep either when her music playlist started again with the same Maria Mercurial song again. At least it was better than listening to Tai Lun's version of "Wheels On The Bus."

Several songs later he heard Hunter's commlink start ringing.

"The phone is ringing." came Tai Lun's artificially cheery voice. At least she had stopped singing, for now.

"Yes, I know." Hunter said, sounding rather fatigued.

After a little bit John felt the van pulling over to stop.

"Shit." Hunter cussed.

"What?" groaned John.

"Hang on." Hunter told them. John figured she had transferred the call to her implanted commlink for a more private conversation.

"What's the holdup?" Hoss asked over their private network.

"Got a call from Dean Costello." Hunter told them. "Claims to be our Mr. Johnson. Called me when he couldn't get a hold of Cypher. Says he's been hacked and didn't tell us to go anywhere."

"Could be lyin'." Crunch said.

"How'd he know we're moving?" Hoss asked.

"Didn't hack the Red X." John told them.

Hunter said, "If Dean sent us the Red X, there's ways he could track it, easy. And I doubt it he's lying. Dean's the kind of guy who'd do the hacking."

"Even hackers get hacked." John added, though he honestly could not think of any time recently where he got hacked.

"How much does Dean know?" Hoss asked.

"Plenty. Knew how much we're getting paid, that Miguel was the one who met us at Goodfriends, and that we had one walk out on the deal." Hunter told them.

"Think we should still go?" Hoss asked.

"No." Crunch said.

"Yes." Hunter said.

"Why?" John asked.

"Dean gave me a lot of details about this job. Things only Mr. Johnson would've known." Hunter told them. "If whoever's waiting for us doesn't know shit, we deal with Dean instead. Besides, Miguel's been bugging me all night about this job."

"And if they do?" Hoss asked.

"Guess we'll have to figure that out if it comes to that. How far can you hit someone with that bow of yours, Hoss?"

"Two hundred meters, easy." Hoss replied.

"You two hang back for backup. We'll go in."

"Kids should stay back." Crunch said.

"Can I burn his face off?" Mina groggily asked.

"No, you can't." Hunter told her sternly.

John then realized that Mina had spoken aloud, rather than through their private connection.

"Besides, Cypher's packing enough heat himself." Hunter added. "We're going."

Apparently it was settled as the van started moving again. A short while, and a few turns later they stopped again. "We're here." Hunter told them.

Mina groaned softly as she pushed herself up.

"Are we there?" Tai Lun asked.

John also could not help but groan as he peeled himself from the van's floor. He slipped his fingers in underneath his goggles to rub the sleep from his eyes, and wished he had some ice cold water to drink.

"I hope they have apples." Tai Lun continued, "I like red. I hope they like red, too."

"Please be quiet." Hunter pleaded.

"Tai Lun, you'll need to be quiet now, okay? They will tell us when we're there." Cheng said. He also sounded tired. Had he been up all night too?

"C'mon you two." Hunter said, "Might wanna make sure you've got a spirit ready, Firefly. Cypher, crack their leader's commlink. Otherwise, keep quiet and play along."

"Okay." John said.

Mina tiredly groaned, leaning heavily on John's side and saying nothing as they climbed out of the van through the passenger side door. They were in the small parking lot of what John figured was the Kentucky Market.

The sky above still looked gray in the early dawn, with the sun's glow slowly creeping in from the east. The air was cool and smelled fresh. John felt a bit invigorated.

Together they walked around to the driver's side of the van to stand with Hunter. There he saw a sign above the front doors of the market saying "Kentucky Market", along with a few AROs that John figured said the same thing in a few other languages.

Waiting for them between a white sedan and a blue pickup truck were five others. Four were human and one a dwarf, with the dwarf and one of the humans being women.

Though she was still looking tired, Mina did her best to stand more on her own. She still held his hand, though.

"You bring the animals?" the dwarf asked. She was darker skinned than the others there, likely of African-American descent. Her thick dark hair was in dreadlocks, and bound back in a high ponytail. She wore a long skirt, black top, and what might have been a second-hand military vest.

"Yeah, we've got the VIPs." Hunter said.

"VIPs. Nice." the dwarf said as she cracked a smile.

The dwarf's commlink was not hard to find at all. He started analyzing it before going to hack it.

"Hold on there." Hunter said, holding a hand up. Two of the men looked like they were ready to take the van. "We didn't say we're turning them over just yet."

Finding nothing that looked like it could be a data bomb or even encryption, John went straight for a brute force attack on its firewall.

"So you're not turning the animals over?" the dwarf asked.

"Well, where's our pay for the job?" Hunter asked.

The dwarf chuckled. "You want money for doing what's right?"

John broke through the firewall, but either he was still more tired than he realized or something else when he did. The commlink itself had detected his intrusion and triggered an alert.

"That was the deal, wasn't it Ms. Johnson?" Hunter asked.

"What the fuck?" the dwarf asked, not looking at Hunter as she pulled out her commlink.

John fought with the dwarf's commlink to keep connected. He started with a threaded nuke attack, and between his fatigue and a new pain in his head it was rather weak. The virtual grenade did slow down her commlink quite a bit.

"Shit." cussed the dwarf as she continued to fiddle with her commlink.

"Something wrong?" one of the men asked.

John continued fighting with her commlink to stay connected, along with whatever commands she was inputting. He was still the faster as he searched the commlink for data.

"I thought we might be able to negotiate." the dwarf said, still looking down at her commlink.

"Too late to negotiate when we took the job. Ryan should've told you what we agreed on." Hunter said.

John found something called a 'reporter' on the dwarf's commlink, a program that had been uploaded to Dean's commlink, based on some of the notes tied to it. Its last report was from five this morning about Dean's commlink going to sleep mode.

"Ryan? Never mind. Could your hacker just fuck off?" the dwarf asked.

On her commlink John found that minutes after that was a log of a text message sent to a particular address, posing as Dean's commlink. That text was word for word the same that said to deliver the animals to the Kentucky Market. The text log showed none of the other messages they received on the Red X.

"Fuck you." John returned.

The dwarf looked up at John in surprise, literally as she was about a meter ten in height, and figuratively as it looked like she saw she was being outclassed.

Having what he wanted, John forced a virtual hand deep into the commlink's operating system. He replaced whatever display background she had set with an animated skull and crossbones, having the Jolly Roger chatter its jaw as he forced her commlink to crash. The look on the dwarf's face was priceless.

"What've you got, Cypher?" Hunter asked.

"She's got this reporter program on Dean's commlink. She used its info to fake the last text to the Red X."

"Yup, we're outta here."

"Fuck it all." growled one of the other men, "A woman and two kids? We can take 'em!"

John slipped his hand free from Mina's to reach into his jacket to pull his Predators, chambering lethal ammo. He took two steps back as shot once with each at one of the men that rushed him. One pistol jammed, but it looked like he scored a lethal hit with the other. He had to jump back more as the man fell face first at his feet.

There was a sudden burst of heat, a flash of intense fire from Mina's outstretched hands. Another of the men had also tried rushing them, and was now rolling around on the ground as he desperately tried to put himself out.

It was over as quickly as it had started. Before John could even figure who he was going to have to shoot next saw that the other humans had been taken care of. Hunter and the dwarf were having a stare down, with Hunter holding a small pistol in her cybernetic hand.

Hoss's archery skills were proven to John when he saw the third man lying on his side, an arrow sticking out of his ass. This one did not look like a stick-n-shock arrow that the troll had used the night before.

Crunch had been the most surprising. John figured the ork had snuck up on them while they were talking, and had knocked the woman down. He was standing over her now, with one booted foot pressing heavily on her back.

"We got tipped off that Dean got hacked before we got here," Hunter said, "and know you're not who hired us."

"Get off me!" cried the woman, "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

"Let her loose, Crunch." Hunter said, ejecting the magazine from the small pistol before pulling the slide to eject the chambered round, "We're done here." She plugged the extra round into the magazine and tossed the unloaded pistol back to the dwarf.

"You can't just take the animals!" the dwarf cried.

"Taylor, you okay?" the freed woman asked as she rushed to the burning man's side. He had managed to put himself out, but his face and chest were badly burned. John also noticed a horseshoe that looked like it had just been branded on the back of her light tan synthleather jacket.

"Should get 'em to a street doc, fast." Hunter said, "And try and stop us." She turned climb back into the van.

John was a little more careful, keeping both Predators aimed at the dwarf and others. Turned out he was overly cautious as they were more keen on tending to their wounded instead of trying to take the animals by force. Once he was settled that there would be no more fighting he holstered his pistols and opened the passenger door for Mina.

"Is everything okay?" Cheng asked as John and Mina took their spot behind Hunter's chair.

John, not feeling tired, sat upright against the van's side. Mina dropped herself at his side, resting her head half on his shoulder.

"Just confirming these weren't the right people." Hunter said, "They didn't seem to like the idea they're not getting the animals."

"They do not sound nice." Tai Lun said.

"No, they weren't nice." agreed John.

Mina said nothing as she heavily dropped down against John. She really looked tired.

"_You okay?_" John silently asked her.

The van's engine chunked as Hunter started it.

"Mmm tired." Mina muttered.

"Is she okay?" Chung asked.

"Well, she's a magician," Hunter said, "and I think she might've overdone that flamethrower spell she did just a bit ago. You gonna be okay, kiddo?"

It felt like they were pulling out of the market's parking lot, the engine revving to get up to speed on the street.

"Ssleep, pleasse?" Mina slurred tiredly.

"How're the kids?" John heard Crunch ask over their private network.

"Cypher's fine, and Firefly's sleeping off her spell." Hunter said.

"Knew they shoulda stayed outa it."

"Hey, she'll sick a spirit on ya." John challenged.

"Mmm bug sstomper." Mina muttered.

"Oh boy." Hunter said softly, "Yeah, be careful there, Crunch. I think she might've conjured the same fire elemental I saw her do for a rather mean beetle spirit a few months back. The bug really didn't like the heat."

"Ouch." Hoss said painfully.

"Crap." John said softly, pulling out the Predator that had jammed earlier.

Using the smartgun system built into the pistol, John ordered the weapon to put the round back into the magazine, then eject the magazine.

"Something wrong?" Hunter asked.

"Gun jammed." John said, thumbing the first round out of the magazine. Setting the magazine aside, he picked up the round to look at it. The combination casing and propellant of the caseless round looked scorched.

"Hope it's just the bullet." John said, pocketing the round. He then juggled reloading the magazine into the Predator with one hand. Finally succeeding in that he put his Predator away.

"What you think happened?" asked Hunter.

"Charge case thingy didn't explode."

They drove on in relative silence, feeling like Hunter was just randomly driving them around the PCC sector.

John wondered just how tired Mina had gotten when she fell over to half lay on his lap. Tai Lun, chewing on a chunk of bamboo, gently patted the redhead with a paw.

Some time later Hunter's commlink started beeping.

"The phone is ringing." Tai Lun said almost right away.

"Yes, we know!" barked John. He wondered if the panda had somehow set up a hotkey to say that at the press of a single button.

"Shit." Hunter cussed more softly. "Guys, I'm getting a call from Mikael Petrov."

"Mine says Lin Yao." Hoss said.

"Don't these people know we're on a job?" John asked.

Mina mumbled something unintelligible.

"Maybe that's why they're calling." Hunter said. "But why both?"

"One Russian, one Chinese. Not good." Hoss said. "Anyone calling you, Cypher?"

"I gotta reboot that 'link first." John said, "Can't get calls 'till I fix it."

"Awe, shit." Hunter said like she suddenly had a revelation. "What if they're wanting one animal each?"

It made perfect sense to John. China and pandas were practically synonymous, and wolves felt like they could easily be a Russian, or at least Siberian, thing.

"Separating them won't be good for either of them." Cheng said, "They depend on each other."

"And I don't really care what they might pay, I don't feel like taking a rep hit." Hunter said.

"So we're blowing 'em off?" Hoss asked.

"Yup." Hunter said, her commlink suddenly going silent.

"It a good idea?" Crunch asked.

"Want word to go 'round that you'll sell out to the highest bidder?" Hunter asked back.

Crunch said nothing more. Maybe he freaked out Mina for reasons John could not understand, but at least this ork was easier to work with than Billy. The walking penis of a razorboy would have whined till the seventh age about missing out on more money. Anyway, it was his fault for bailing on them.

It was not long until Hunter's commlink beeped again.

"The phone is ringing." Tai Lun announced.

"Cypher, if she says that one more time, scramble her voice box." grumbled Hunter.

"Okay." John said a little more nervously than he would have liked. He never had picked up any signals from the commlink Tai Lun used for speech, and wondered if he would be able to plug either of his commlinks into it to get a connection.

"Tai Lun, please, these people know when the phone is ringing." Cheng said.

"Why the fuck didn't I put this shit on silent?" Hunter asked herself softly.

After a few minutes, Hunter said, "Good news guys, we're on the way now. Got a call from Dean to drop the van off at Casquillho Imports."

"Sure we're gonna be able to get there?" Hoss asked, "That's two border crossings."

"Dean said not to worry." Hunter told them. "And I told him if it didn't work that I'd have Cypher make his life a living hell in the matrix."

John chuckled. It felt nice that Hunter had that kind of faith in his skills, but part of him wondered if Dean believed it as much as she did.

Some time later John saw the archway of a border checkpoint appear through what he could see of the front window. By an ARO he could access it was the Colfax Avenue entrance into the CAS sector. He suddenly felt nervous about getting through.

Hunter barely slowed down as they passed right on through like they were Ghostwalker himself.

A little while later Hoss said, "We got through, no problem."

They continued on in silence for the roughly sixteen and a quarter kilometers Colfax Avenue ran from one side of the CAS sector to the other.

John was a little less nervous when the archway for the border crossing to the UCAS sector showed up. Just like last time Hunter barely slowed down as she went right on through.

"Just waved me on like it's nothing." Hunter said. "Glad Dean came through for us on this one."

"Glad you guys live in this sector." Hoss said a few minutes later, "A guard wondered about your cycles in the back."

"Got through okay, though?" Hunter asked.

"Pretty much. Managed to tell 'em we're takin' 'em back to ya from being fixed up."

"Glad to hear that."

John was also glad to hear it, though he said nothing.

It was probably another fifteen minutes later until it felt like Hunter was pulling into a parking lot.

"Well, this is it." Hunter said as she turned the engine off.

It took a little prodding to get Mina moving. With a soft groan she lifted herself up, and blushed as soon as she realized where her head had been resting.

"What will happen to us?" Cheng asked.

"Someone'll be by to get you guys after we leave." Hunter said, "And don't worry, they already know you're with us and why."

John's legs felt stiff and tired as he stood up. Mina did not look any better as she wobbly caught herself on the van's wall. After a little bit to get their legs working again John grabbed his sword and they were soon out of the van. He then released his hold on Cheng's commlink.

"Looks like you survived just fine." Hoss said as he sat John's motorcycle down behind his truck.

"Yeah, I guess." John said as he connected himself to his motorcycle, waking it up. When that was started he toggled his basic commlink to reboot, which would set its ID back to the previous setting. It did not matter now if this Setto Karemaru or his hackers tried to track it now, the job was done.

"From what Hunter said," Hoss said with a grunt as he lifted her blue Contrail, "that panda's a real chatterbox."

"Well, uh, we, um slept a lot." Mina said as she climbed onto John's motorcycle, slipping her arms around him.

"Heh, lucky you." Hoss said.

"When do we get paid?" Crunch asked.

"As soon as we leave and the goods are picked up." Hunter told them. "I don't think he's 'bout to screw us now."

"You sure?" Crunch asked.

"As sure as you've got your goblin stompers burning horseshoes into people."

Crunch grunted.

John figured he would look up 'goblin stompers' later, as right now he could feel that Mina just wanted to go home. He was also kind of feeling the same way, so he started up his Katana-11's engine.

"Catch ya 'round!" John called out as he and Mina left.

They were just pulling onto Colfax Avenue on their way home when John's commlink beeped once with a money transfer. With a thought he accepted the incoming five thousand nuyen.

John was glad he would not have to revenge hack Dean for not paying up. Regardless of that, he was just glad to be on his way home.


	17. Run 17 : Patient Zero

Run 17 : Patient Zero (based on the mission written by Aaron Pavao; posted 2013/05/03)

John's dream completely vanished like a crashed simsense program as a commlink barged in on his sleep. At least there was no modified giant panda to tell him the phone was ringing.

"Who the fuck is this?" he muttered as he reached for the beeping commlink.

Mina groaned, rolling over in her sleep.

The beeping commlink was Mina's, and John had to shove aside their clothing to unbury it. "Hoi, there, chummers." he read aloud the text on its screen, "Look, I know we haven't really worked together before, but I know you know my reputation as well as I know yours. I've got an opportunity for you, so please take my call." He did not recognize the commcode. "No idea who's callin'." he said.

Mina groaned.

"Sounds like work, anyway." John grumpily said.

He knew how she felt. With Mina's commlink in hand he laid down back beside her. With his free hand, as Mina immediately rolled to lie half on his chest and pinned his arm, he answered the call.

"… fucking worth it!" came Billy's voice very loudly.

"Maybe if you shut up and let the man talk we'll find out." Morph's voice returned.

"Well, as soon as all of us are together." said a familiar voice.

"All of us?" Billy asked.

"Yes." snipped John.

"Dumbass." Mina added.

"What the fuck?"

"What, you thought you were the last one we're waiting for?" asked Hunter.

"Well, guess that we're all here…"

"You sure? I can't see the last one." Billy said.

Hunter and Morph both groaned.

"Like we wanna see your ugly face." Mina said.

"They're both on one 'link, so what's it matter if you can't see 'em?" asked Hoss.

"Please, please, it's quite urgent." the familiar voice said, "I need you all to be at fifty-three-eighty-seven South Irvine Street by five-eighteen this morning."

"We got a job there, Matty?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah, it's somethin' like that. It's all good karma." the voice, Matty, said. "Stop by Five By Five later and tell me 'bout it. I'll buy you guys a round."

"So that's it?" Billy asked disdainfully.

"I'm sure going there'll pay off in the nuyen department." Matty suggested.

"Weird, but, well, I'll be there." Hunter said. She did not sound too thrilled.

John sighed. "You up to this?" he asked softly so only Mina would hear.

"Yeah, guess I'll be there. As long's the pay's good." muttered Billy.

"I guess." Mina mumbled.

"We'll be there." John said more loudly so everyone could hear.

"You kids live in the UCAS sector, right?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John replied.

"How soon could you make it to the Nukit Burgers on Colfax near the border?"

"I guess soon." John replied.

"I can meet you there, give y'all a lift." Hoss offered.

"I think we'll need it." Hunter said.

"Then I'll meet you in the PCC." Morph said.

"Ok."

"Great." Matty said, "I'll be off the net for a while. Remember to stop by later."

Mina's commlink beeped when the call closed.

"We gotta?" Mina asked. She did not sound thrilled about this at all.

"I guess." John said, feeling just as tired. Holding up the commlink so he could see its display, he saw that the clock said 03.42.

"Almost four in the morning." John groaned.

They were too tired to really say anything as they geared up and got dressed for another run into the shadows.

Hunter and Hoss were already there and waiting for them at the Nukit Burgers a block east of North Chambers on Colfax avenue. Not feeling particularly hungry they skipped the late night meal from the twenty-four hour fast food joint, and instead claimed the back seat of Hoss's truck while the troll put his motorcycle in the truck's bed. He stashed his sword just under the back seats.

"Weirdest call I've had. How 'bout you guys?" Hoss asked as he climbed into the driver's seat. The street lights played odd shadows across his face to John's sleep deprived mind.

"Had a Red X for a Mr. Johnson a few nights ago." Hunter said, closing her door. "Turned out to be Dean Costello."

"I'd call it a tie." commented Hoss.

John yawned.

"You kids sure you don't want at least a drink?" Hoss asked, "Kaf-Pow? Buzz cola? Water?"

"No." John said.

"No." Mina added, falling to lean on John's shoulder.

John closed his eyes to rest.

"… wake up." he heard Hunter say.

"Wha…?" John sleepily asked.

"I said, time to wake up." Hunter repeated, "We're here. And we've got a problem."

Mina groaned as John straightened himself to sit upright. Through sleep deprived eyes he saw what Hunter meant by a problem.

The address Matty had given them, had urged they be at by 05.18 in the morning was a yakuza casino. And it was not just any casino, but the same casino he and Mina had snuck into for a data steal six weeks ago.

"Okay kids, I'm setting up our network." Hunter told them.

Almost immediately John got the invite.

"We all on?" he heard Morph ask.

"Just about." Hunter said. John noticed she was looking at Mina.

"Oh, yeah." Mina said, half awake.

"Little kids should be in bed." Billy commented. Something seemed different about his voice.

"So why're you up?" John asked.

"Stow it you two." Hunter told them.

"While we were waiting I made some calls." Morph said, "Place's under new management, and might be a bit easier to get into this time. Problem's gonna be the kids, like last time. Unless Firefly's learned a better invisibility spell?"

"Sorry, no." Mina said softly.

"Just how much easier, Morph?" Hunter asked.

"Guards don't even look like they're checking names this time." Morph said. "Been watching while we waited."

"Why not hack the place?" asked Billy.

"They used inhibiting paint." John said, "Couldn't hack it last time, remember?"

"_And we're half asleep?_" Mina silently said across her private connection to John.

"I think I've got something." Hunter said, "Hoss, Billy, why don't you two go ahead and go in? I'll talk with Morph for a bit and we'll see about following you in."

"Don't wait too long." Hoss said as he got out of his truck.

"C'mon you two, out." Hunter said as she too got out of Hoss's truck.

The night air was colder than John expected, slapping him in the face like a wet towel that had been in a refrigerator. He and Mina leaned against Hoss's truck while Hunter went to talk with Morph.

Looking off to the east, John could barely see the faint glow of an oncoming sunrise. He checked a weather service node and found that sunrise was not due until 05.39, a good twenty minutes after they were even supposed to be here.

After a few minutes Hunter walked off towards the casino. She also closed the networked chat between everyone.

"We're gonna wait a bit, then follow." Morph said, walking around to their side of Hoss's truck. It looked like he had used whatever magic he had to blunt his elfish features to look more human, particularly his sharp pointed ears.

"Thought we were going in." John said, half watching Hunter as she walked into the casino.

"We are, all of us." Morph said, "We just gotta do a little shuck and jive, and without the group chat thing going."

"What?" Mina asked.

"A con, some bullshitting." Morph told them.

John checked the time through the commlink built into his goggles. It said 05.01, so there was not a whole lot of time now.

"Should be good 'nough. Now just follow my lead." Morph told them.

They had to walk around Hoss's truck and a few other cars in a roundabout way to the casino doors. It seemed so easy, until they got right up to the entrance.

"No kids allowed." grunted one of the guards.

"We're not here to gamble." Morph said.

"No perverts allowed, either." the other guard said.

Until now, John had forgotten that the casino was in the building's basement, and upstairs was a brothel.

"Fuck, no!" recoiled Morph, "We're looking for my sister, their lazy ass mother! Tracked her as far as here, and we mean to haul her ass out of here before she gambles away their food money!"

"I'm hungry." mumbled Mina.

"We gonna not have breakfast again?" John asked.

"She's about yay tall," Morph continued, putting his hand higher than John's head, "long blonde hair. I'm sure you'd notice her."

"She hot?" asked the first guard.

"Fuck, she's my sister!" cried Morph. "Look, ten minutes, that's all, please. If she's not here we're gone."

"Alright, fine." relented the first guard.

The front parlor looked rather unchanged from the last time they had snuck in. Even the WiFi cut out as soon as the door closed behind them, but there was a flood more activity that John could feel, and it was not from the commlinks of others. Hoss and Hunter were nowhere to be seen, but Billy was in the lounge chatting up a prostitute. There were also a few guards trying to be discreet with somewhat obvious bulges in their coats.

"Looks like it's downstairs we go." Morph said.

The dimly lit casino floor had been completely redone from the last time. Various gaming tables were all done in augmented reality, right down to the playing cards and chips. Along one of the far walls were an array of AROs showing all sorts of sporting events and races from around the world, and right below them were bookies taking bets. The air was thicker with the smell of various tobacco products this time, and John wondered how well the air filtration was.

"Glad it worked." Hunter said, stepping up from behind them.

"Seemed easy enough. Kids are alright actors, too." Morph said.

"So just why the hell are we supposed to be here?" Hunter asked. "There doesn't seem to be anything odd going on here."

"Matty said to be here at five-eighteen." Morph said, waving someone over.

It apparently was Hoss. He was one of a handful of trolls in the casino, with most of them watching the sports AROs to gamble and cheer on their favored fighters.

"Nothing special goin' on here." Hoss said.

"Well, we still have some time." Hunter said.

John felt like he might fall over, as tired as he was. He figured Mina was feeling the same when she took his hand just before leaning against him.

Together they walked over to the sports screens. The patrons watching them, the bookies, and even the wait staff seemed to pay them no mind at all. Maybe the others thought they were dwarves?

At 05.18 everything changed. John more felt than heard a sharp crack, almost like lightning, as all of the AROs, their lights and sounds, winked out all at once. Much of the pressure of the WiFi was just gone, and this hit John like an ice cube being dropped down his back.

There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone, patron and staff alike, tried to figure out what had just happened. It certainly was not a power outage as the dim lights were just as dim.

When the AROs did not return after a few seconds, some of the patrons started to get vocal about their games, their winnings and losses.

"_You okay?_" Mina asked, their private connection still working normally.

"_Y… Yeah._" John told her.

"Did you do anything?" Hunter asked from right behind them.

"Fuck no!" John answered.

"Excuse, prlease." a Japanese waitress said in heavily accented English, "Managa would rlike see you nao."

"Us? You sure?" Hunter asked.

"_Hai_." the waitress replied.

"C'mon." Hunter said with a sigh.

The waitress lead them through the casino floor to the stairs. Many of the patrons were getting quite upset now, and John overheard more than one manager-like person doing their best to calm and placate those most upset.

They were lead to a private meeting room on the ground floor. The room was decorated like a Japanese dining room, including a low set table. Seats with backrests were supplied, along with an extra large one for trolls. At the center of the table was a white noise generator that was running.

Hoss, Billy, and Morph were already sitting and waiting when John, Hunter, and Mina were escorted in.

"Prlease hafve seat." the waitress said. She did not enter the room, and closed the door behind them.

When the door was closed, the only signals John could feel were those of everyone's commlinks, plus one extra node in the ceiling at the center of the room. Billy's commlink felt particularly strong for some reason.

The room was also apparently completely soundproof.

"Looks like we're all here." Morph said. "Shoulda seen Billy's face when we came in. He thought he was gonna get himself a five way."

"Eww." Mina and John both went at the same time.

Not knowing how long they were going to have to wait, John took a seat next to Morph. Mina immediately took the other seat next to John.

"Any idea how long we gotta wait?" Billy asked.

"You still got money to buy a hooker?" John asked. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a way to get comfortable.

"That's enough!" Hunter cried.

"At least we know what Morph meant by a 'five way'." Mina added.

"Okay, both of you, please behave." Hunter said.

"Yeah, best we try to be on our best behavior." Morph added. "Unless you had something to do with hacking the server."

Before John could say anything, the door behind them opened again. Turning to look he saw a single man walk in, a bit taller than Morph, slightly thin build, with auburn hair and blue eyes, wearing a suit that looked quite expensive, and a gold ring that looked a little more orange than yellow. The door closed right behind him.

The man slowly walked around the low set table and took the last remaining seat. John wondered why he felt like this was a meet for a job.

"As I'm sure most of you are aware, the AR system for the casino was crashed by one or more unknown perpetrators." the man said, his voice sounding familiar. "This has cascaded to our other systems, and is causing a large disruption and loss of profits. You can either take the blame for this, and you'll be duly punished for your actions, or you can work to clear your names and find those responsible."

"Why don't we just kill you and walk out of here?" asked Billy.

John slapped a hand to his face.

Mina and Hunter both groaned.

"You forgetting those guards out there?" Morph asked back, "Try it and they'll make you holier than Pope John XXV.

"Now if we take the job, just what'll you be paying us, Setto?" Morph asked the man.

"Of course you'll be paid for your services. Ten thousand nuyen, each," Setto said, "provided you capture for us or kill the perpetrators."

"Setto? Setto Karemaru?" John asked. He was not expecting Setto Karemaru to look like a non-Japanese person.

"Yes." Setto said, looking at John. "Have we met?"

"Fuck, it's just business." John said.

Setto's eyes darted off, thoughtfully, for a second or two. Soon they were back on John. "You must be Cypher." Setto said. "I was told you alter your voice over the matrix."

"Yeah, he's Cypher alright." Hunter said. "Now why us?"

"Yeah," Billy added, "if you know Cypher then why not take him for the hacking?"

"We've got files on the shadowrunners working in Denver." Setto told them, which John did not believe. "And your reputations precede some of you. Cypher and Firefly," he looked at both John and Mina, "Child runners, hacker and magician, and both quite good." Setto then looked to Billy and said, "By his rep alone, I can believe Cypher didn't do this."

John took a deep breath and let it out in relief. Setto apparently was not aware of the last job against this casino he had been involved with.

"You sure?" Billy challenged.

"I don't think the server would've crashed if he hacked it." Setto said with rock hard confidence. "You, on the other hand, wouldn't've crashed it at all. Security would've dumpshocked you before you got through. We are, after all, have better secured servers than an elementary school."

John felt a lump come up his throat, but otherwise managed to say nothing.

Setto continued, "Now, to help you we will provide you with the security data, once we have it."

"As long as the hacker didn't manage to wipe it out." Morph said, "I overheard someone say your server was hacked, and that it was impossible."

"I've been told the data will be recovered." Setto told them.

"Amateur." muttered John.

"What did you say?" Setto asked.

"Like he could do better." Billy said.

John glanced to Hunter, and saw her shake her head.

"Nothin'." John said.

"So, will you do this job?" Setto asked.

"Yeah." Hoss replied forlornly.

"Why should I?" Billy asked.

"I think if you don't, your next stiffy's going to be your whole body, or your next fuck's gonna be a troll sized stun baton up your ass." Morph said, "Count me in."

"Yeah." John said.

"Okay." Mina added.

"I'm certainly in." Hunter said.

"Alright." grumbled Billy. "But only ten grand?"

"And your reputation." Setto added, "Though maybe you don't care as much as the others do."

John took it to mean that there would be no negotiating the price of their services. Really, though, he felt fine with that. Ten thousand nuyen in his pocket for a job to clear his own name of a crime he did not do? He figured not many would pass that up.

When Billy said nothing more, Setto said, "Then our business is concluded." He stood, adding, "We'll notify you once we have the security data."

John and Mina were the first to stand, eager to leave.

"So how the hell did Matty know that was gonna happen?" Morph asked once they were outside well out of earshot of the guards. The sky above was turning a mixed shade of blue, white, and gray as the sun threatened to pop above the horizon.

"Don't know, but I plan on asking him." Hunter said.

"And to get that drink." added Billy.

John held the door for Mina before he climbed into the back seat of Hoss's truck. He was glad it was so much more comfortable than the seats in the meeting room.

"So, to Five By Five?" Hoss asked, holding his truck's door open.

"Meet you there." John heard Morph say before hearing a car door close.

They travelled in silence for a while. John closed his eyes to rest.

The next thing he knew, Hunter was jostling his shoulder. "Time to wake up, again." she said.

"What?" John asked.

"Five more minutes." Mina mumbled.

"No, now." Hunter said more sternly. "We're here."

John could see Hoss duck as he walked through the man sized door into the underground bar.

Taking their time, John and Mina both got out of Hoss's truck and followed Hunter inside.

Five By Five was almost dead at this hour, with Matty cleaning glasses behind the bar. A lone, sleepy looking elf sat in the corner, nursing his own drink, his hand occasionally twitching on the table.

Morph and Billy were already there, having claimed stools at the bar for themselves. Despite its reinforced look, the barstool Hoss sat on creaked just a little under his weight.

"Hey, no kids." barked a grizzled dwarf as John and Mina walked through the door.

"Serious?" Mina asked.

"Hey, Cypher?" Matty called out from behind the bar.

"Yeah?" John called back.

"They're okay. I'm expecting 'em." Matty said.

The dwarf grumbled as John pulled out his Predators, Warhawk, Hatamoto II, and last his holdouts, placing them all in the weapons box at the door.

"That's all of 'em! Promise!" he said to the dwarf, grinning.

The dwarf only grunted back.

John walked up to the bar and climbed up onto one of the stools. Mina then climbed up onto the same stool and sat on his lap. They sat sideways, and Hunter was sitting behind them.

"So, how'd it go?" Matty energetically asked.

"The casino was practically all AR." Morph said, "Seemed pretty typical."

"And right at the time you told us to be there, the whole thing just crashed." Hunter added. "Not just one table, or a game, or one whatever. The whole network they had. The whole casino went down"

"Oh shit. Hope there wasn't too much trouble for you." Matty said.

"Oh, yeah, there was." Billy complained.

"He didn't get his hooker, I bet." Mina piped in.

John could not help but burst out laughing, partially because he was just about to say the exact same thing.

"The place's a brothel too?" Matty asked, first looking at Billy, then turning to Mina. When he realized who said that his expression changed to one of concern.

"Don't worry, Matty." Morph said reassuringly, "I've heard the kids say worse things already. Life on the streets and all."

"Yeah, I'm sorry 'bout that. The Exchange popped that one on me short notice. Made it all sound super urgent and really specified you guys. Well, I said I'd buy you all a round, so that's what I'm gonna do." Matty told them.

Hunter and Morph both had a can of Ares 40 Caliber, a synthohol that still had the kick of a real alcoholic drink. Billy and Hoss both got something stronger, a bottle of Orkstaff's XXX, a really thick ale that ran no less than one-sixty proof. John got the details by pulling quick searches from the matrix, based on the labels he saw.

"And I got something special for the kids." Matty said, "Wasn't sure why when I did, but I'm not questioning it." He sat two half liter bottles labeled Hugo Natural, their contents a bright red liquid that bubbled just a little. Though smaller than the Orkstaff's XXX bottles, John found that the Hugo Natural ran for just as much.

Their bottles hissed slightly when opened, and the first taste of cherry hit John's tongue like a freight train. It was strong, and as best as John could tell it was real fruit juice and not a chemical cocktail made to mimic the flavor of a cherry.

"So I take it you guys are off and looking for whoever crashed the casino?" Matty asked.

"We are." Hunter said, "But first, what's this Exchange?"

"It's a peer to peer kind of program. Got a copy a while ago." Matty told them, "Super complex. Trades favors for you automatically, and it's really worked out well. Managed to get me some really expensive Italian wine, and that on good terms with a guy who knew someone to help with some magical security 'round here."

"So it just pops up with requests?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah. Usually little stuff, sometimes bigger stuff. But the big stuff really pays out in the end." Matty said with a big grin.

"Wasn't that what those old Red X 'links did years ago?" Morph asked.

"Dunno, never heard of 'em." Matty said.

"Maybe." Hunter said.

"You know who else runs this program?" Morph asked.

"Not really. Some I've figured out, but not too many. I think the only way you can get a copy is to literally get a copy from someone else on the Exchange."

"What's up? Thinking that Setto could be running the Exchange, too?" Hunter asked.

"Thought it was a line of shit that he had files on all of us." Morph said. "Especially the kids. There's not a whole lot out there on them."

"Thought he was talking shit." John commented. He knew that most data about himself, particularly anything bad or incriminating, seemed to vanish within a day or two.

"So you think the Exchange prompted him to hire us?" Hoss asked.

"Possible." mused Hunter, "And I've got a good gauge at how much data's out there on Cypher. Almost nothing. I seriously doubt Setto's got much in the way of data on most of us."

"What about me?" Mina asked.

"Not really a whole lot, but more than Cypher." Hunter told her.

"So, um, what do we do from here?" Mina asked.

"Check the security stuff." Billy suggested.

"No good until the server's back up." John said, "Could be a while."

"Commlink doessn't take more than a minute." Billy said.

John groaned. "Commlinks are shit to a server. They run a few hundred terabytes and they're running. Server's got a gigaton of shit to do, millions of petabytes to process, hundreds of connections to make."

"Huh?"

"He means you can't just flip a switch and turn it on and it's all working top speed." Morph said, "How long could it take?"

John thought about it for a moment, taking a good mouthful of his drink, then said, "A few hours, maybe more. Depends on how fucked up the system got before it crashed."

"So if Setto's hackers gotta fix stuff, maybe a day?" Morph asked.

"Remember… LuCom?" John asked. "Half a day and their hackers were still repairing the node. Firewall had holes big enough for Billy to hack his way through."

Morph chuckled.

"Why so quiet?" Hoss asked. John noticed he was looking at Hunter.

"Huh? Oh. Just doing some research." Hunter told them. "Thought I saw something in the news about a recent AR crash. Big one was at the… Mental Health Corp. of Denver in the CAS sector a few days ago. Messaged someone I know in Knight Errant about it, and I'm waiting for a reply."

With a thought John opened up an ARO to do his own research into the mental health clinic, taking another mouthful of his cherry drink.

"What gud doess that do uss?" slurred Billy. His bottle was already empty.

"They might have a clue what caused the crash." Hoss said. "If the same as the casino, then we just gotta figure who was at both."

John's search had already turned up the clinic's home node, which said it was a private mental health hospital, boasting a high quality health care plan for patients in need of immediate care. He also had their address.

"Yeah, Knight's tracking a bunch of AR system crashes." Hunter told them, "Apparently it's been happening a little too frequently the last week for someone in KE's liking."

"Then I say we go check it out." Morph said, slipping off of his barstool.

"Okay." Mina said, sliding off of John's lap, her more than half full bottle still in hand. He was not far behind her, his own drink just about as full.

"C'mon, rubber legs." Hoss said, grabbing Billy by the collar.

"Well, good luck to you guys!" Matty said as they headed for the door.

Mina sat real close to John as they rode in the back seat of Hoss's truck.

"So, what's the game plan going to be?" Morph asked over their private network.

"You and I will try to talk to the staff, see what we can get." Hunter said, "If Cypher's feeling up to it, he'll hack in for data."

"Won't the Knight get pissed at that?" Hoss asked.

"I'm better than that." muttered John.

"So what're Hoss and the lush gonna do?

"Maybe best if Billy and I trade places." Hunter said.

Mina groaned.

"Can we get a couple a gas masks?" asked John.

"You'll manage." Hunter said, "Hoss, you find a place to park elsewhere, just in case."

"And bug out if Cypher says there's an alert." Hoss added.

"Fine, I'll start now." John said.

John and Mina had to shuffle about a bit so John could lie down across the back seat of Hoss's truck. Mina was right next to him, apparently finding it more comfortable than trying to somehow sit.

Finding the Mental Health Corp. of Denver was quite easy as John's icon stepped from the static of the matrix into a full virtual lobby. He made sure the hood of his beige robe was drawn up so his stealth form would hide him from everyone else.

But not everything was as picture perfect. John could feel something in the node. Sometimes an icon or another seemed to twitch in an odd way, or seem razor sharp or turn cotton fuzzy. Some of what was going on reminded John of how the LuCom node felt the afternoon after it had been trashed.

Aside from the one entrance where the visitors came and went, there were no other obvious doors, portals, or passages. So instead he walked over to a virtual wall and put his hands on it, feeling the code of the node's firewall and checking for any kind of traps.

Finding no traps, John pulled on the resonance to bolster his exploit form, his virtual fingertips sharpening into claws to dig into the firewall's code.

Probing took a little longer than John thought, and he figured it must have been because of the node having been crashed a few days ago. After three hours of work he managed to force his way through the MHCD firewall.

Icons of some staff could be seen, moving about and doing whatever business they had.

John felt a shiver run down his spine, and what was weird was this came from within the node. He looked around to try and find what might have caused it, and found it.

An agent program was also running in the node, and had just done a general sweep of the place.

Rather than trust in his stealth form to hold up, John dug into the resonance again to form a disarming program. He then placed his hand to the agent, tiny barbs all along his armored palm gently pressing into the agent's code. He sought out its analysis program and in three seconds had it neutralized against his presence.

"Okay, I'm in." he silently sent to Hunter.

"Good. Walking in didn't give us much." Hunter said, "Try nosing around their records and see what stands out. We don't really have much to go on right now."

"Great." John said with a sigh as he walked over to what looked to be a data vault. Touching his hand to it he found he was able to pull up individual patient session records. Sorting them chronologically revealed a gap of several hours, so he pulled out the last record just prior to the node's crash.

It was a transcript of a call between a nameless doctor and a patient named Kyle. This guy had been admitted to something called a Crisis Triage Unit by Lone Star. An image of Kyle was included, but the doctor was delegated to a serial number. The conversation was substantially one sided, with Kyle babbling about a talking cat that was haunting him.

The next immediate file was another transcript of a call between a similarly nameless doctor and a patient named Mary who had checked herself into the same Crisis Triage Unit, and an image of her was also included. The conversation certainly seemed odd to John, this Mary talking the way she did as he read the transcript. It was like she was talking to someone else, like the Seattle doctor was only hearing her half of the conversation.

Hunter bugged John after he had gone through about a dozen files, all of them seeming quite similar. "Find anything yet?" she asked him.

"Lots of weirdoes out there." John said, "But I can't find anything that sticks out."

After a few seconds of silence Hunter said, "Best to just grab copies of the recent stuff and pull out. We got a call from the casino and they've got the security logs for us."

John grabbed copies of what he had read along with two dozen more, uploading them to the commlink in his goggles. He then went back and wiped away what trace evidence he had created, including spending a few extra seconds to wipe away any resonance traces before logging off.

When John was looking at the real world again he found himself still lying in the back seat of Hoss's truck, with Mina still lying next to him, her back pressed against his chest.

"Okay, I'm back." John said as he slowly pushed himself upright. He felt his heart skip several beats when he found one arm around Mina like he had been trying to put some moves on her while she was asleep.

"Everything alright?" Hunter asked.

"Uh, yeah, fine." John stammered as Mina righted herself to a sitting position.

Hunter chuckled.

All six of them walked through the casino doors. The guards looked like they were told to expect John and the others, saying nothing as the doors were opened for them. John could not help but notice the sharp stares from the guards as they passed by, and he felt like he was being accused of crashing the casino earlier that morning.

It was not just the guards outside, but much of the staff inside as well, right down to the serving girls that managed to steal a glance at them.

The casino was back up and running, John could feel. The weight of the WiFi was back to what it was before the system crash, though he could still feel a kind of delicacy to how everything was running.

They were shown to Setto's office by a young Japanese woman, silently standing aside as they walked in.

Setto was waiting for them, looking tired, frustrated, and impatient. He also had two bodyguards in the room with him this time.

"Glad you could finally make it." Setto said harshly. "I hope you have some good news."

"Well, not much more so far than that you're not the only place to have been hit." Hunter told him. "There've been several other places that have had their AR system completely crash."

"Something that should be impossible." Setto said. "So, who and why?"

"That, we don't know yet." Morph said.

"Maybe if we could look at them there security records?" Hoss asked.

"Yes, of course." Setto said. He waved his hand about like he was pressing invisible buttons in the air.

When Setto was done, John could feel access to a new node. Right away he dove into it to look through as much data has he could. He let the others go for the video feeds, and went straight to the data of the security logs.

And a lot of data there was. The security log outlined a series of cross connections between behavioral analysis software and the AR environment itself, all right up to a timestamp of 05:17:59.99, just before the network crashed. But there was more in the data that John could feel, something that did not sit quite right, something just beneath the code.

A resonance signature.

Mentally John pushed aside the data, digging through the code to this signature. His heart stuttered as realization hit him in the head like a twenty kilo sledge.

The resonance signature was that of the machine sprite he blasted outside of Karakutchi two months ago.

It made some sense to John, as a machine sprite could either help maintain a system's stability, or completely wreck it.

"You seeing what I'm seeing?" Morph asked.

"I think so." Hunter said.

"I just see people." Billy said flatly.

John was more occupied with trying to find where the machine sprite was, and particularly how it had managed to get into the casino in the first place. A sprite could have made a trip from the resonance realms directly into the casino, but only if it had a way through its firewall. And machine sprites were not exactly known for their exploits to break through a firewall.

"That woman's acting weird." Mina said.

"What woman?" asked Billy.

With a thought John pulled up a copy of the video feed Mina had been watching. It only took a few seconds for him to spot a familiar face. Mary's. He ran two fingers over the curve of his right ear.

"So, you believe you've found who did it?" Setto asked.

"Fuck if I know." Billy said.

"For what you've got in the security logs," Morph said, "all the gaming tables and such, there's only one person who stands out that's not one of us."

"Her." John said, tracing a red box around an image of Mary's face.

"You are sure?" Setto asked.

"Sure enough that I think we should at least try tracking her down." Hunter replied.

"Right then." Setto said sternly.

John cut his connection to the new node as everyone else turned to leave.

"C'mon, you sure it's her?" Billy asked, walking behind everyone as they headed for the casino doors.

"If they think so, I ain't arguin'." Hoss said.

"Like I said, sure enough that I want to try tracking her down." Hunter told them.

"I'm more sure than that." John said.

Morph stopped and turned to face John. They were a few meters from the exit. "You know something we don't?" he asked.

"Uh, not here." John said, "Outside."

"Alright then." Morph said, not sounding too convinced.

Once they were outside, standing between Hoss's truck and Morph's sedan, Morph brought it up. "Okay, so, what is it?"

With a thought John pulled up Mary's medical record that he copied from the mental health clinic, the transcript of her confusing conversation with a doctor in Seattle, setting it so the other five could each see a copy.

"Yeah, I think he's got it." Hunter said.

The bulk of the transcript read:

««««« Begin Audio Transcript »»»»»  
PNP-100127: Hello, Mary. Can you hear me all right?  
Patient: Yes. I hear you. Where are you?  
PNP-100127: I'm in Seattle, Mary. I'm here to help you.  
Patient: I can see you.  
PNP-100127: No, Mary, you can't. I'm talking to you over the Matrix, and we're not using video. I'm connected to your commlink.  
Patient: You've been doing this to me!  
PNP-100127: No, Mary, I just met you.  
Patient: Why have you done this to me?  
PNP-100127: You're in a safe room, Mary. We're going to keep you safe so we can find out what's wrong with you.  
Patient: I won't do it!  
PNP-100127: All right, Mary, that's okay. You don't have to scream, I can hear you fine.  
Patient: You wouldn't dare!  
PNP-100127: Wouldn't dare what, Mary?  
Patient: Leave my family out of this!  
PNP-100127: All right, Mary, we don't have to talk about your family. What would you like to talk about?  
Patient: Stop doing this to me!  
PNP-100127: It's okay, Mary. I just want to ask some questions and talk to you a little while and then we can let you go.  
Patient: That's insane! How could you g... [unintelligible]  
PNP-100127: Okay, Mary, calm down ...  
Patient: [unintelligible]  
PNP-100127: We don't have to let you go. Just settle down, take some deep breaths ...  
Patient: ...king insane!  
PNP-100127: Okay, Mary, can you calm down for me please?  
Patient: Okay, I'll do it. Just leave my family alone.  
PNP-100127: Good. And I promise not to go near your family. I didn't even mention them. Now, how do you feel.  
Patient: Fine. Actually, I'm feeling great. I'll be checking out now.  
PNP-100127: Do you think that's a good idea, Mary? I think we should talk more ...  
Patient: If you need me, you can come visit me at the Penrose Library. Otherwise, thank you for the lovely conversation. Be seeing you.

««««« End Audio Transcript »»»»»

"Images match, and she really seemed to be weirded out." Morph said.

"Certainly seems unstable." Hunter added.

"But why'd she crash a casino?" asked Hoss.

"Who fuckin' cares." Billy said, "She's probably just a drugged up bitch."

"Only way you can get a date?" Mina scornfully asked.

"Chill." scolded Hunter, "Now we don't know for sure. All we know is she happened to be there at the same time when the casino crashed."

"Tryin' to defend her?" asked Billy.

"Stating this legally." Hunter said, "She could've done it, but we don't quite have the proof."

John kept his mouth shut about the machine sprite. When he noticed Morph looking more at him than the AROs, he harshly asked him, "What?"

"You sure this's it?" the elf asked.

"Why not go to the Penrose Library and ask her?" Hunter asked. "I'm sure she'll be a better source of info than Cypher."

"Okay, then."

John felt his stomach gurgle.

Mina giggled at the sound, but then her stomach made the same noise and she blushed.

"Maybe we should stop at a McHugh's on the way." Hunter suggested.

They all stopped by a McHugh's just off of Belleview Avenue, getting burgers to go. From there they took the Belleview border crossing into the CAS sector. John and Mina both had finished their meals just as Hoss pulled into the parking lot of the Penrose Library.

Once again Hunter established a private group chat between the six of them.

"Right, let's go get the bitch!" Billy said enthusiastically as he climbed out of Morph's sedan.

"The hell you will." Hunter said sternly. "You and Hoss are gonna stay here in case she tries to rabbit. The rest of us are going in to talk with her once Cypher leaves his big guns behind."

"So what're we supposed to do till then?" asked Billy.

"Why?" John asked.

"You could try covering the exits." Morph said, "There's sure to be more than one."

"This place isn't the kind where you can, or should, walk in heavily armed. A yakuza casino's one thing, this is something different." Hunter told him.

Billy grumbled something John could not quite hear.

"Hell, I wouldn't even be carrying them in the casinos." Morph added, "And Billy, it's that, or we have Cypher here create evidence that says you did the casino job."

"Fine." Billy sharply said.

John Pulled out his Predators, Hatamoto II, and Warhawk and stashed them under the back seat of Hoss's truck. He and Mina then followed Hunter and Morph to the library's main entrance, a large pair of double doors at the right side of the building itself.

The library itself looked like it was built more out of windows than real walls, reaching two stories up from ground level. The windows themselves were more like smoky mirrors, reflecting the outside back with a charcoal tint.

The double doors of the main entrance opened automatically for them. Right away the local node tried to upload a file, but after John took a look at it he let the library map be uploaded to his commlink. The main floor was largely open, with dozens of comfortable chairs, tables, and study carrels. For most of the width of the building to their left was marked off as an Isolated Matrix Lab, along with a set of stairs that went up to the second story and also to a basement. The smell of the air was cool yet stale, a kind of forced control of the atmosphere within the building.

"File said her name was Mary, right?" Morph asked.

John brought up the transcript file. "Yeah."

"There's a Mary Dragovich here." Hunter said, "Archivist. Looks like her office is downstairs."

According to the map there was an elevator right in front of them, and walking around a little revealed its doors. The elevator was already there for them, opening with a chime as soon as Morph pressed the call button.

"Can you hit the close button?" Hunter asked once they were all inside.

"Yeah, sure." John said, finding a physical button to push.

Morph was looking more around than at any of them, apparently finding nothing unusual when he asked, "So, got a game plan?"

"Nothing elaborate. More for the kids." Hunter said, her gaze more off in some invisible distance. "Cypher, do your usual thing. Scan for everything wireless, hack it, make it yours while we're here. Firefly, call up a spirit for support but don't give it a task yet, watch her astrally but don't do anything unless you see trouble."

"Okay." John said.

Mina only nodded. After a few seconds she said, "I've got an air spirit now."

"Go ahead and push the basement button." Hunter said.

John did, and almost right away felt a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was not long until they reached the basement, and John's map changed right away.

The air was noticeably cooler, though it still had the same stale tang to the smell.

According to the library map, a Government Document Archive was right in front of them. The Archivist's office was just to their right.

"Remember, let us do the talking." Morph said as Hunter opened the office door.

"Can I help you?" a woman asked. Behind her was a wooden desk ladened with many stacks of paper, some of which John guessed were as tall as he was.

John figured it was Mary. She looked like the image in the medical record he had gotten. Right away he went to feeling for signals and was nearly overwhelmed with how much there was.

"Sorry to bust in like this, but we've got some questions we'd like to ask." Hunter said.

Most of what John was picking up were thousands of RFID tags, which was most of the signals. It did not take any effort to filter those out to find Mary's commlink. Right away he started forcing his way through its firewall.

"What's this about?" Mary asked.

"It's about some recent network crashes." Hunter said, "Some of which we've found you were at."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Mary told them.

He was already through and into her commlink. The interior sculpting seemed unremarkable to John. Aside from a pair of AR gloves and contacts there were no other subscriptions, but he also got the ID of her commlink and its commcode. For the moment he left the gloves alone, yet opted to hijack her contacts to see what AROs she saw.

"I'm not so sure about that." Hunter said, "We've got evidence that puts you there."

Mary walked around her desk, putting it between them. "If it's digital, you should know how easily it can be edited."

"We know the authenticity of the evidence." Morph said, "It's original."

There was an odd signal John could still feel. It was faint, so it had to be close. He was able to resolve it like a node, but it was still odd. Figuring it might be something Mary had on her, he went straight to forcing his way in.

"I… I'm sorry, will you please excuse me?" Mary said, and without waiting for an answer she pushed her way out of her office. She and John locked eyes for an instant, and she rushed off.

John had just gotten through when he lost the signal, barely able to realize what he had broken into before it was gone.

"Something's bothering her." Morph said.

"Sure is." Hunter added, picking up a large folder that was on the desk. "Why else would she write this with a straight face?"

Written on the folder was "HELP ME" in big, bold, black letters.

The world around them went crazy. AROs blinked off and on, and alarms started ringing. The connections John had suddenly went crazy and he fought to keep what he could.

"What the fuck?" Morph asked loudly.

An automated voice soothingly said, "For your protection, and that of the collection at this facility, the building has been locked down. Please remain calm and wait for Knight Errant Security Services to take control of the situation. Thank you for your cooperation." It repeated itself twice more, at least John figured it did, as the voice continued in a different language or two.

"Crap! Let's see if we can get outta here!" Hunter yelled.

They bypassed the elevator entirely as they headed towards a stairwell instead. That door proved to be locked.

"What about the elevator?" Mina asked loudly.

"Switched off as soon as the alarms started!" Hunter yelled back.

"So what do we do now?" John asked.

"I could ask a spirit to break the door down!" Mina offered.

The alarms suddenly went quiet.

Looking around, Hunter said, "No, no good. And dismiss that spirit you've got now."

"Okay." Mina said.

"Forgot my lockpick gear, too." Morph told them.

Hunter sighed.

"So, I guess we're gonna bullshit our way out?" Morph asked.

"Shuck and jive?" Mina asked.

"I'm trying to come up with something." Hunter said. She did not sound very happy at all.

Morph looked around a bit. "Looks like there's just some cameras down here. We tell Knight we're here to look at some of the archived books for a summer project for the kids, and got caught here."

"Better than anything I can think up." Hunter said. "We'll also wanna make sure our commlinks are in public mode. LEOs don't like private too often."

After waiting for a few minutes Mina spoke. "I gotta go to the bathroom." She quickly trotted off for the bathrooms just a short ways off.

A short while later John felt the urge too. Looking at the doors he saw three were marked as bathrooms, with one extra large for trolls in general. "Be right back." he said as he walked into the men's restroom.

After relieving himself he walked back out. Mina came out of the lady's room at about the same time.

Ahead of them the doors to the stairway up flew open. A man in full body armor with an assault rifle in hand and at the ready.

"Shit!" John yelled, dropping himself flat to the floor in the hopes he would not get shot.

Mina shrieked.

"Hold it right there!" yelled the man. John could hear the footsteps of more as they rushed into the room.

"I'm holding! I'm holding!" John cried.

"Hands up!" another voice said.

"What's this about?" Hunter asked, trying not to sound too angry.

None of the men said anything right away.

"What're they doing?" Mina asked.

"Just an identity check." someone said.

"Ma'am, what's your relation to these kids?" another asked.

John's heart leapt into his throat. His and Mina's fake SINs both had them listed under the same guardian's name, but it was not one of Hunter's fake names.

"Old school friends with their guardian." Hunter said. "They're busy, and they're fine with us being in other sectors."

"And what's your business down here?" he asked.

"Summer time research project." Hunter replied.

Again there was silence. John was really glad he had gone to the bathroom when he did. It felt like it was taking forever for them to do everything, and he figured he would have ended up lying in a puddle of piss if he had not.

"Sorry for the inconvenience." the first man said. "You can all relax now."

John took this to mean that he no longer had to keep his face pressed to the floor. He was careful as he stood up, moving slowly so he might not get shot by accident.

"I hope you're not giving everyone this kind of treatment." Morph said, using his hands to brush himself clean of whatever dust he collected from the floor.

"We had a spirit respond." the man said, "Its magician said there were armed people down here. There's no staff here, so we assumed it was you."

"Spirits don't lie. Someone in here's packing a gun." another man said. "The girl and man are awakened, but their SINs and all checks out."

John felt really nervous, his legs turning to rubber. "I… um…" he tried to say.

"Yes?" the first man asked sternly.

Moving slowly in the hopes that he would not get his head blown off, John reached over to his right arm and carefully pulled his sleeve down to reveal the holdout in his hidden arm holster.

"A Morrissey Élan, that explains it. Just hold it there, kid." one of the armored men said. He shifted his grip on his assault rifle, but at least did not aim it at John.

Another man, probably the team leader because of how much he had been talking, walk over to John. He wore full body armor but carried no assault rifle. A Knight Errant emblem was painted over his heart.

"Just stand still, son." the armored man said. With one hand on the holdout, and careful that the pistol was not aimed at anyone, he pulled out the magazine to examine the ammunition. "Stick-n-shock rounds. Nonlethal."

"I live…" John started to say.

"North of the Warrens, yes, we know." the man said, "Stand down men, I think we're okay here. The spirit was told to check for guns, so this kid just set it off."

"Is it legal for a kid to carry a gun like that?" another asked.

"No age limit on the laws." a third said, "Just gotta pass a test and background checks. Besides, he's got a concealed carry permit as long as it's loaded with non-lethal rounds."

Thankfully his fake identity had held up. Might be time to call Merlin to see about a new one, just in case.

"We'll escort you back outside, and you'll be free to go." the same man, the team leader John figured, told them.

They all walked in relative silence as the Knight Errant team escorted them up the flight of stairs they came in by, and out.

There were dozens of Knight Errant officers about, though most of them were not as heavily armored as the five with John. Several of them talking with other library patrons that had been escorted out.

"I don't have to tell you to be careful with this, I hope." the Knight Errant officer said, handing John his magazine back.

"Nope." he said, taking his magazine. With a well practice twitch of his arm he caught his holdout, reloaded it, and checked the action to make sure there was still a round chambered. When everything looked good he let the holdout slide back up his sleeve.

The officer chuckled as he and the other four walked away.

The Knight Errant officers pretty much ignored them as they walked away from the library.

Hoss was standing by his truck, looking as worried and concerned as pretty much everyone else. "What happened? Where is she" he asked when he would not have to shout to be heard.

"I think she rabbitted on us." Morph said.

"Didn't see her come out here." Hoss said, "Though I think I might've been the only one watching."

"Hey! I too was watching!" Billy declared.

Hunter sighed. "Never mind that now. She left us a clue, though. But let's get out of here first."

They wasted no time getting into their vehicles.

John had not even noticed that their group chat connection had crashed as Hunter got it set back up again.

"So, where're we off to now?" asked Morph.

Hunter took a deep breath, silently saying through their private network, "I think we need to track her down."

"Do we have to?" asked Billy.

"Wanna get paid?" Morph asked back. "Any ideas on how we can manage tracking her?"

"So just what is it you got?" Hoss asked as he drove down Evans Avenue.

"Mary wrote this as she was talking to us." Hunter said, "Says 'Help Me'. Seems like she's under duress or something."

The folder was not empty, and Hunter pulled out a single sheet of paper.

"Something in the folder?" Morph asked.

"A one page paper report on the effects of AR and the unconscious mind." Hunter said.

"Dead tree format will never die." commented Morph.

"But why this?" Hunter asked.

"Maybe she's on the rag?" asked Billy.

"Shut up!" Mina said sharply.

"Shut the fuck up!" Hunter said at the same time.

No one said a thing as Hunter looked over the piece of paper. "Shit." she said, breaking the silence.

"What's up?" Morph asked.

"Shoulda had Cypher hack the casino himself to see if anything was tampered with." she said, "This page has five key things necessary for planting suggestions into people's brains via AR. One of them is a program that can generate completely random and patternless numbers."

"Like what a casino might have." Morph said.

"Wouldn't've done any good." John said, "Hacker could've just copied what it needed without tampering. Crash would've helped cover any traces, but that's messy."

"What else is in that list?" Morph asked.

"Let's see. Knowledge of metahuman psychology beyond a university department, unprecedented control of electronic devices,"

John's heart skipped a beat when this was mentioned. He immediately thought of machine sprites, matrix entities he could create but hardly used. And then there was this wild machine sprite the others did not know they were tracking.

"a program capable of analyzing the metahuman subconscious, and schematics and source code for various display links." Hunter finished.

Again John's heart skipped a beat, as machine sprites were notorious for their ability to interface with pretty much any kind of computerized equipment such as these.

"_Uh, John?_" Mina asked softly over their private connection.

John looked to Mina. She had a concerned look on her face, but said nothing else.

"So how're we gonna track the bitch down?" Billy asked.

"Watch it," Hunter said sternly, "but you're right. She's our only lead in this."

"I could ask a spirit."Mina said. "I still got a service I can ask."

"I got her 'link, too." John added, "I can try tracking her down."

"Alright you two, go at it. But be careful." Hunter told them.

John let himself sink into the depths of virtual reality, the interior of Hoss's truck being replaced by a temple with a mix of super science fiction and fantasy elements.

With a virtual hand he brought up an icon, entering a sequence of alpha-numeric characters that was the access ID of Mary's commlink. With a thought he began a trace to try and track down the commlink. This proved fruitless as at best he could only truly identify nodes that were up to four hundred meters away.

"_My spirit's looking for Mary now, but it could take a long while._" came Mina's voice, coming out of everywhere at once.

"I think I might have her soon." John said, dismissing the first icon for another. This one he entered in Mary's commcode. He had no idea what he might say if she actually answered, but felt it would be worth a try in tracking her down.

After the second ring the call was answered, and right away John started tracing the connection.

Mary said nothing, and in fact John could not hear anything at all. However, the connection was still open and within seconds he had a location. He brought up a map of Denver to look up the address he got from his trace.

John brought himself back to the real world, keeping his connection to Mary's commlink, and the trace, active.

"I got her." he said, "There's no name, but there's an airport south of here, just off of… highway… four-seventy."

"She's at the airport? Shit." cussed Billy.

"Slap a patch." Morph said, "That airport's been abandoned for years. CAS government's just not sanctioned any building projects."

"Well, she's not there. But close." John said, "There's a bunch of buildings just east of there."

"I know that area." Hoss said, "Bunch o' factories. They make drones and sensors and stuff."

"How about AR imaging devices?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah, that too."

"Cypher, dig up everything you can on those factories while we get there." Hunter said.

"We'll get there." Hoss said.

John slipped back into virtual reality before beginning his dive into a data sortilege. After several minutes he felt he was done, and returned again to the real world.

"Not much useful, 'cept that Mary should be there." John told the others. "And there's only one connection. An antenna on the roof."

"Must be rather high powered, then." Hunter said. "How close you have to be to hack it directly?"

"'Bout four hundred meters."

"Pretty close." Hunter commented, "Should see to getting a more powerful transceiver in your 'link."

John said nothing. He would have to deepen his connection to the resonance to try and extend his range. His commlink was more of a cover and a range booster, as it could connect to anything up to a kilometer away.

"_Are you okay?"_ Mina asked.

"_Yeah, why?_"

"_You seemed… upset when Hunter was reading from that paper._"

"_It's nothing._" John tried a reassuring smile. Deep down he did not feel so confident.

"Why not just hack it now?" Billy asked.

"It's nearly a dead zone around that area." Hunter said, "And there's a good chance we'll be passing through it on our way there. If we're not within any kind of signal coverage it'll dumpshock Cypher. Best to have him do his speed hacking magic once we're there."

"So, miss leader, what's the game plan gonna be?" Morph asked.

"Kids stay back for support, Cypher hacking of course, and Firefly in astral with whatever spirit support she can give. The rest of us will break in to rescue Mary."

"Rescue? Why the fuck for?" Billy asked.

"Because she might be a pawn in this." Morph said.

"She did look pretty calm when we were talking to her." Hunter said.

"Something was off. I couldn't quite figure it." Morph added.

"She was scared out of her mind." Mina told them, "It was all over her aura. I don't know what it was, but she was terrified."

"Knew you were there to kill her." Billy said.

"Fuck you, or I'll burn you!" Mina cried, "She wasn't afraid of us!"

"Okay, easy. We're not gonna kill her." Hunter said, "And Billy, if you do try to, I'm not even gonna try to stop Firefly."

"She might not be fast enough." Hoss darkly added.

It was mid afternoon by the time they reached the factory complex down in the southern part of the CAS sector. It was just about right between the Pueblo and UCAS sectors, a stretch of the CAS sector that was less than ten kilometers from east to west.

John could not help but keep thinking about the machine sprite, and the fact that it had shown up again. He racked his mind, trying to think of anything he might be able to do to ensure its destruction. Only one way kept coming to mind, and even it was not a guarantee.

But that was not all that occupied his mind. Again and again he also thought about what machine sprites could do.

Then there was how he could tell the others about this. Billy he knew he could bullshit with a bunch of technobabble, and maybe even Hoss might believe it. Morph too, depending on how tech savvy the elf was, but more likely he would be able to tell the line of bullshit.

Hunter, however, would be the hardest to lie to. Not that John could not lie to her, but that she seemed almost as knowledgeable as he was. She might even have the software and skills to actually tell a sprite from an agent.

Mina pressed herself close to John, resting her head on his shoulder. It looked like she knew he was wrestling with something monumental, but she otherwise did not say anything.

Along the way they did truly lose connection to the matrix in general, and John was indeed glad that Hunter had suggested waiting until they were there.

The factory itself was a complex of five separate buildings. The parking lot was empty when they got there, except for one other car. A ratty looking, yellow Honda Spirit.

John got out with the others. Mina was right behind him. The air around stank of metal, ozone, and oil.

"You two stay in the truck." Hunter said, "It'll be more comfortable there."

"It's not that." John said, his heart pounding in his chest. "It's just… just that… I don't think you should have anything wireless on."

"What do you mean?" Morph asked.

"No fucking way." Billy said.

"You'll be able to give us support, won't you?" Hunter asked.

"Maybe, but it's not that." John said, lowering his head and looking at the asphalt.

"What's up, kid? You're hiding something. What is it that you know?" Morph asked, sounding like a stern father that was ready to give a hard handed spanking.

"I don't think Mary's the one doing this." John told them.

"We know. We feel the same way." Hoss said.

"But I know what it is." John said, looking up at the troll.

"It?" Morph asked.

_Damn, he is good_, thought John.

"Couple months back, when we did that job to clear Dean on murder," John said, "I don't think that woman was really the one givin' orders."

"She confessed, and she's a hacker." Hunter said.

"If it wasn't her, then who was?" Morph asked.

"That agent that looked like her wasn't really an agent." John said softly, "It was a sprite. A wild, machine sprite."

"Bullshit, there's no way you'd know that." Billy said.

"If so, then what about it now?" Hunter asked.

"I… I…" John stammered, trying to figure what to say and how to say it.

He felt Mina take his hand, lacing her fingers with his and holding tight.

"Maybe you caught some strange code from that agent back in April, but custom made agents can do that." Hunter said.

"Let's just go, kid's wastin' our time." Billy said. He turned and started walking towards the factory building.

"I know, 'cause… 'cause… I'm a technomancer!" John yelled.

Billy nearly tripped on his own two feet, turning back around to face the others. One step backwards and he actually did land on his buttocks.

Morph, Hoss, and Hunter were harder to read, though it looked like Morph and Hoss were more surprised while Hunter actually might have been expecting this.

What worried John most was Mina. With her magic she could turn him into a human Roman candle in an instant. Instead she pressed up close to him, slipping an arm around him.

"You're one of those brain fuckers?" Billy cried. He looked like he was ready to either try running away, or maybe spring to attack.

"Kinda makes sense." Hunter said.

"How so?" Hoss asked.

"I've just noticed a few clues, that's all." Hunter said.

"How can we be sure that he's really a techno?" Hoss asked.

"Yeah, that's right." Billy said, standing back up. "Could be lyin' to us."

"I doubt it." Morph said.

"You want proof? Huh? You want it?" John yelled. With his free hand he yanked his goggles off, and with them in hand he looked Billy straight in his cybernetic eye, saying, "Everyone thinks I use this to hack, but I don't."

"Whoa." Morph said softly.

As he spoke, John found the ID of Billy's implanted commlink and went straight into a forceful attack. It was different this time, the firewall was incredibly hard compared to before.

"So what do you use?" asked Billy. Did he not notice John's nearly solid blue eyes?

On the second hit John was through the firewall. He had full access to Billy's commlink, and it was completely different than before.

"_I use my brain._" John said silently to Billy, the implanted commlink carrying his voice, a chorus of a dozen people speaking at once, to the razorboy alone. "_Something I don't think you have._"

"What the?" Billy stammered. Maybe he was looking at the others, but it was hard to tell.

"What's going on?" Morph asked.

"I think Billy's just been hacked. Again." Hunter said.

John still had his connection to his goggles, and from there uploaded a copy of his Negator program. He did not bother hiding it as he set it to hide everyone else from Billy's sight.

"Gah! He's fucking with my mind!" Billy yelled, blindly lunging for John.

John and Mina separated, but Hunter was right on the razorboy. With a leg sweep she took him down.

"Get over it!" Hunter yelled, "He's not fucking with your brain!"

"I uploaded a Negator program to your commlink." John said aloud, standing back up. "I've done it every fucking time! It makes things vanish."

"The fuck you did!" Billy yelled. As soon as he tried to get up, Hunter was back down on him. He managed to throw her off as he stood.

Hoss was next on Billy, grabbing him by the wrists and pinning him to the ground. Despite how strong Billy might have looked, he did not appear to be able to budge the larger troll.

"Just settle down, fuck." cussed Hunter.

Going back to Billy's commlink, John gave it a thorough rundown. The interior sculpting was too neat and clean compared to before, and a little digging into it told John that this was a completely new commlink, complete with a whole mess of high end programs and an agent that was actually running. It even still had its corporate logos all over, and John felt a little sick to his stomach when he saw them.

But there was a problem. Though the agent program was active, it had no loaded software or instructions.

With a thought John crashed Billy's implanted link.

For a moment Billy was stunned.

"I crashed your link." John said.

"You couldn't've!" Billy said defiantly.

"Are you done fucking around?" Hunter asked.

Hoss stood, leaving Billy on the ground.

Once Billy realized everyone was looking at him, he asked, "Me?"

"Yes, you." Morph replied.

Billy looked totally put out. "Yes, fine." he huffed as he regained his feet.

"Right, so what've you got that can help us?" Hunter asked.

John looked at the others before speaking, though he kind of ignored Billy. Mina was back at his side before he spoke.

"It's a machine sprite." John told them, "It can fuck with anything wireless it can interface with. You go in networked…"

"And it'll mess with us worse than you did Billy." Hunter finished.

"Yeah." John said, nodding.

"What's it want?" Mina asked.

"What's any wild spirit want?" John asked back. "Fuck if I know."

"So how are you so certain it's the same thing you dealt with back in April?" Morph asked.

"Technomancers leave a special trace behind." Hunter said, "It's a kind of signature unique to that techno. Something only another techno can sense. Kind of like auras to magicians."

"I clean up after myself." John said. "I know it's… signature. I saw it in the casino security vids."

"And Mary?" Hoss asked.

"Maybe a techno too?" Hunter asked.

"I think so." John said.

"I believe she is." Mina told them. "I saw something weird in her aura. Something I've not seen before."

Morph sternly looked at her. "Then how come you were completely surprised when Cypher said he's one?"

"I… I…" stammered Mina.

"Lay off." butted in Hunter, "It's not an easy thing for any seer to read in a person's aura. Even my roommate says she can miss if someone's a techno."

"And who's she?" Billy asked.

"You probably know her better as 'Ghost'."

"Okay then. So how do we stop it? The sprite?" Morph asked.

"I'll do it." John told them.

"I wouldn't know, so I guess leave it to him." Hunter said. "We'll take care of Mary, and get her out."

"Alright then." Morph said.

John could feel their commlinks disappear as they all switched their transceivers off. Even Billy, though John thought he heard some softly spoken curses. Their vehicles were not forgotten, either.

Just as John turned to climb back into Hoss's truck, Mina wrapped her arms around him.

"What…" he started to say just before she pressed her lips to his.

"Don't waste your time! Make sure that sprite can't escape!" Hunter called out to them.

Mina broke their kiss. "For luck." she said softly.

John's heart pounded hard in his chest. Not from fear, but exhilaration. Back in the backseat of Hoss's truck John slipped himself into virtual reality and began the search for the factory's only connection to the matrix.

It was not too hard to find at all, and after a quick scan of the node John called up his data and crack sprites, and went straight to a forceful attack on its firewall. In two seconds he was through.

The sculpting inside the node looked rather high tech and yet simplistic. John's icon was floating in the center of what could have been an airport terminal, a massive cylindrical room that was very wide. The ceiling rose upwards and looked like an inverted tornado with a clear view straight through the center.

There was very little data moving about, and after a quick scan John found that the only other subscriber was the sprite.

Placing his hand on the virtual floor, John went straight away to first subverting the sprite's authority. It had actually created itself an account in the node, and John was able to reduce the privileges from an administrative level down to a restricted user's level. This included not being able to send data from the node.

Confident that the sprite would be trapped in the node once it entered, John went about through more of the node to make sure that nothing else was, or could be, connected to it through the matrix.

"I have detected you." John heard a feminine yet alien sounding voice say. It was like some of those sci-fi programs, where the alien spoke and a computer translator turned it into English. Was it the sprite?

"You are shadowrunners." the alien voice continued, "You are a risk to the subliminal suggestion algorithm."

"The subliminal what?" John asked back, his voice a chorus of speakers in unison.

"I am Taske." the alien voice said. "The subliminal suggestion algorithm will be completed. The algorithm will be implemented and deployed through nodes currently under control. Humanity will be overwritten. Corporations will be deleted. The subliminal suggestion algorithm will be protected."

"Fuck you! Protect this!" John yelled as he shoved a fist through the virtual floor. With his other hand he reached for the infinite passage above, grabbing both and isolating the data flow through his mind alone.

He felt more than saw the machine sprite, Taske, at first. It might have looked completely different this time, like a box frame with a multitude of ticking clockworks inside, but the resonance signature was the same. It was wholly within the node now.

"Always wondered what'd happen if a node crashed with you in it." John said. Without waiting for Taske to reply, he pulled chunks of the node's vital code free.

For a moment, a split second that almost seemed to be frozen in time, John saw something change within the sprite. Just as he was about to grasp what that change was his world went black, like someone had flipped off a light switch in a room with no windows.

"John! John!" he heard Mina yell.

John's vision was blurry as he looked up at Mina. Was he lying in the back seat of Hoss's truck now?

"What…" John said, trying to speak. It felt like his whole mouth had been given novacane, his tongue feeling like cotton.

"Just… Just relax." Mina told him.

The world felt like it was spinning around and around, and closing his eyes did not help. Feeling Mina's hands on his chest seemed to help, like if the world was spinning out of control at least she would be with him.

John heard a car door open, and so he opened his eyes. Turned out he was looking right up at Hunter, upside down, as she looked down at him.

"Not goofing off, I hope." she said sternly.

"No!" Mina cried, "There wasn't anything magical at all, and no one else, so I just asked a spirit to guard you guys. Then Cypher did this weird thing and I got all scared and…"

"Weird thing?" Hunter asked.

"My head hurts." John said with a fat feeling tongue. He brought a hand up to hold himself, but ended up slapping himself in the face.

With one hand Hunter pulled his hand away, and with her obviously cybernetic hand she pressed a thumb and two fingers to his forehead. Her eyes lit up from within as she stared into his eyes. After a few seconds of this she said, "You know, your eyes make it really hard to tell if you've been dumped or not."

"I… I didn't dump him!" Mina declared.

"Dumpshocked." Hunter corrected, "Like, was he in a node that crashed or completely kicked him out."

"Yeah, that." John said. He sounded better than he thought he should have.

"Awe shit. Please tell me you didn't…"

"Crashed with Taske."

"So how's our little hacker?" John heard Morph ask.

"Son of a bitch took out the sprite all right." Hunter said, "Did it by crashing the node they were in."

"What the fuck?" Morph went, "He that crazy?"

"Is he alright?" John heard a woman's voice ask.

"Yeah, I think he'll be fine." Hunter said.

"Children!" the woman gasped.

John could see a new person just behind Hunter. She looked like the Mary in the images John had seen, though his vision was still a little blurry. Did she not notice his solid blue eyes?

"I can't believe you make children do these things!" Mary declared.

"Hey, we don't make 'em do anything." Morph replied.

"There's…" Mary started to say.

"_Shut up._" John silently sent straight at Mary.

Mary gasped.

"What is it?" Hunter asked.

"No. Not you too." Mary whimpered, holding one hand to her mouth while the other felt around for something to grab. Morph was right there to help her keep her feet.

"Yeah," John groaned as he trid to sit up, managing it with Mina's help, and turning to face the others. "she's a techno, too."

"Yeah! Jackpot!" Billy cried.

"What're you talkin' 'bout?" asked Hoss.

"I… I don't know." Mary said nervously.

"Ya got a new 'link, right?" John asked. "Find a techno and turn him over to MCT?"

"So what of it?" asked Billy.

"What's he…" Mary started to say.

"MCT had a hospital here last year." Hunter said, "Got shut down after it was revealed they were vivisecting technomancers."

John felt sick to his stomach when he heard this. It was something he so wanted to forget.

"I know a guy that'll pay us loads if we…" Billy said. Then there was a sound like a sack of potatoes being dropped.

"The fuck you will!" growled Mina. Breathing heavily, she leaned more against John for support. Did she overpower he spell too much?

"Can you guys get the asshole put away?" Hunter asked.

"What?" Mary asked.

"Girl's a magician, and they're an item." Hunter explained.

Thankfully Mary did not ask anything more.

"Look, you're free to go." Hunter told Mary, "But you might wanna try heading out of Denver. Not sure if this dickhead will try tracking you down since he knows you're a techno."

"But what about the kids?" asked Mary.

Silently John sent Mary images of the six security drones. She was rather weak and unskilled, and John tried to be a bit more careful about how forcefully he sent the data to her.

"What… was that?" Mary gasped.

"My home security." John said. "Someone might break in, but they won't leave alive."

"Is she not that strong?" Hunter asked.

"No, she doesn't feel so." John said.

Mary looked like she was gonna be sick.

"Maybe you should take it a bit easy on her." Morph suggested.

"Fuck no!" John said, raising his voice. "If she were stronger she could've said 'Fuck off!" to Taske. Because she's such a wimp she got bullied into doing its bidding."

"You don't know what it…" Mary started to say.

"I've fucked it over twice now!" John interrupted, "First time I threaded an attack form so it was really powerful. I fucked her up good with one hit!"

"Okay, okay, settle down, please." Hunter said calmly. "Mary, here." Mary's commlink beeped. "A guy I know. He's a techno, too. Tell him Hunter sent you. He'll help you get better."

"So, you're letting me go? Even after what I did?"

"We know you didn't do it voluntarily." Morph said, "And I hope Cypher's taken care of it."

"Fuck yeah." John muttered.

"So you're clear to go." Morph continued, "We'll get it all straightened out at the casino."

Mary seemed rather grateful as she gave her thanks before walking to her car. From there they went their separate ways.

They took their time heading back to the casino, more from Morph's suggestion of waiting until Billy regained consciousness. Over an hour later he was, so then they headed to the casino to give their report to Setto.

The casino guards let them all in without question, though John could still feel their prying eyes. Even with his goggles back on it felt like everyone was staring at his blue-in-blue eyes.

Setto was in his office with empty chairs ready for all. Billy ended up taking a seat as far away from John and Mina as possible.

"Is the task completed?" Setto asked.

"Tracked the culprit down and it's been dealt with." Morph said.

"It?" Setto asked.

"The woman was forced into doing what she did." Morph explained, "The real culprit in all of this was a thing called a sprite."

"A sprite?" Setto asked.

"They're like agent programs," Hunter said, "but they're made on the fly by a technomancer instead."

"And the technomancer that made this particular sprite?"

"We don't know." Hunter said, "This one was wild. Kinda like a free spirit, it did what it wanted to."

"I'm finding this rather hard to believe." Setto told them.

"Well fuck you if you don't." grumbled John. "I know this shit better than anyone else here. I know it's a sprite, it was wild, and it should be completely fucked over."

"He dumpshocked himself, crashing a node with the sprite and him in it." Hunter told Setto.

John found it odd that Billy was not saying anything at all.

"What're the chances of this… sprite… thing coming back?" Setto asked.

Before John could say anything, Morph said, "Same as Dunkelzahn getting re-elected president of the UCAS."

"Well then, I guess there's only one thing left to do here." Setto said. From a desk drawer he pulled out half a dozen credsticks and slid them forward.

Morph collected the credsticks and passed them out, making sure everyone got one.

"Your payment, as promised." Setto told them, standing, "And if you'll excuse me, I've got a meeting with a hacker."

Slotting the credstick right there, John found that there was ten thousand nuyen on it.

John was never as happy to be out of that casino as he was this time as they walked back out to the parking lot.

"You clear headed enough to ride?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John said. He noticed that Billy, still not having said a word, was walking off on his own.

"What's up with him?" John asked.

"We had a little one-on-one once he woke up." Morph said, "He should be keeping his big mouth shut about our little secret."

"Uh, okay." John said, not quite sure what Morph was talking about.

"I'll explain it later." Hunter said, "So, how's 'bout I treat you kids to lunch?"

John's heart felt quite a bit lighter as he and Hunter left, with Mina hanging on tight as she rode behind him.


	18. Run 18 : A Very Bad Day

Run 18 : A Very Bad Day (based on the mission written by Adam Large; updated 2013/05/23)

Despite having been woken up at quarter to four in the morning on a Tuesday, the day had turned out quite nice. Even the fact that Mina and Hunter now knew that John was a technomancer seemed to be a burden lifted from his heart.

The next few days were bright and sunny, with a few trips to a pool to play and relax. Hunter had even given John some advice the day before, suggesting that he tell people that his parents were weird or eccentric and had his eyes colored at birth with biopigments or something. When some kids asked about his eyes, he told them that, and they seemed to accept it without any problems.

The nights were different now that Mina knew. John found it nice that he did not have to try to be sneaky when he went to reregister his sprites, a process that easily took several hours. By Friday he had managed to enforce more tasks from the data and crack sprites he had, but also compile and register a machine sprite.

Feeling a deeper connection to the resonance, the mystery code within the matrix that seemed to connect all technomancers in some way, John tried pulling a stronger combat sprite. It felt like it was a much more arduous fight with this sprite than the others, but in the end he managed to get a few tasks out of the sprite.

That Friday Mina had also opted to try something new herself. The morning was spent finding a shop that dealt in materials to bind spirits. She then spent the afternoon in a ritual to summon and bind a spirit. She was quite ecstatic that evening, saying she had managed to get a lot of services once she was done.

Friday night came and went, so the two spent the night in and watched a trid flick.

It was early the next morning when they awoke to a roll of thunder and what sounded like a torrential downpour. The skies were overcast with cold gray clouds and it was raining heavily. It might have been nicer had it not been the middle of July, or if there was not a hint of rotten eggs in the air.

"What time is it?" groaned Mina.

With a thought John linked his mind up with his general use commlink. It said 05.47.

"Like ten ta six in the mornin'." he said.

Mina groaned again as she rolled over.

The rain was nonstop. It was not long until John had to get out of their sleeping bag to go to the bathroom.

It was much later when they finally got up and out of bed. Their place was cold, and they felt miserable. Even with their winter coats on they had gotten at Winterland the month before.

It was around dinner time and John was feeling rather miserable because the cold, gray rain had just never let up. On top of that everything just seemed to be going wrong. It's as if Murphy himself had decided to visit Denver to enforce the most infamous of his laws.

And it was not just them. One news alert that kept coming up again and again was an ever growing list of automobile pilot programs that seemed unable to cope with the weather conditions.

It was around dinner time when John's commlink beeped with a received message. With a thought John opened the anonymously sent message, hoping that it would not crash again today. It was a trid recording of a red haired dwarf.

"Hey! I looked you up because I have a once in a lifetime job for you." the dwarf said, "I know what you're thinking, 'Why the fuck should I go out in this weather?' That's the whole reason! This is the perfect time for this job!"

"This guy's really excited 'bout a job for us." John said aloud.

Mina groaned.

The message continued, "Get to the Tower Of Babel by seven and I'll throw in another three… *static*." The message crackled and popped, and John found himself bombarded with adds from Buzz Cola to Three Runners' Energy Bars, and dozens more.

"Ow! Fuck!" John cussed as he forcefully cut himself off from his commlink.

"What happened?" Mina asked.

"I think the message got corrupted." John said. He picked up his commlink to check it out. The wallpaper of the display had been completely overrun by viral adds, each one of them competing with the other to make their jingle heard.

"So, we got work?" groaned Mina.

"Yeah. We might get there in time, if we're lucky."

They got geared up for what John hoped would be a night of work indoors. John traded out his winter coat for his black leather jacket, its chemical protection hopefully proof against the rain. Mina was not so lucky, having to risk her pink winter coat in the rain. Not that the coat was not water proof, but it was not resistant to acid rain.

Then his commlink started ringing with an incoming call. It was Tabby, so John went ahead and answered it.

"Hey kiddo." Tabby said as John secured his sword belt on, "Listen, I know it's shitty out, and I'm up to my elbows in it… literally. Had someone's toilet come through the roof above me, I've called second string runners because prime runners are missing, and I've got so many people asking for a shit load of services. Long story short, I need a favor."

"What kind?" John asked sleepily.

"Not up to your usual standards, I know, but it shouldn't take too long and I'll owe you both one. If you can get to Little D's Gourmet Emporium and help with sandbagging. Could you head over and see what you can do?"

"Favors a big deal?" John asked.

"Can be, yeah."

"We got work." John said aloud.

Mina groaned, "Okay."

"Yeah, we're in." John told Tabby, "But we gotta be in the Hub by seven tonight."

"I think you'll make it." Tabby said cheerfully. "Little D's out on East Ellsworth Avenue, north of the Warrens on the CAS side of the border. Besides, I think we all can use a bit of good karma today."

"Okay." John said, ending the call.

Little D's Gourmet Emporium was a lot closer than Tabby might have realized. With a short trip up to Sixth Avenue to cross the border, it was a straight south drive on Potomac Street to hit Ellsworth Avenue.

Unfortunately it was not quite so simple. First was that with many autopilot programs having issues driving most people took it upon themselves to try and drive in the adverse conditions. John would be the first to admit that his skill in driving a motorcycle was far from great, but even he had sense enough to take things more carefully. More than once he felt like he almost wiped out when some inept driver went barreling past like he or she were a T-bird pilot gunning for the border. He felt that if it were not for the smart tires and gyro stabilizer he had installed in his motorcycle long ago that they would have easily had a severe wreck.

Then came the border crossing. Not only was there a line so long that John wished he had taken the tunnels instead, but when they actually got their turn the border agent thought they both were other people! After ten minutes of argument with the border agent's duty supervisor, they managed to convince the guards that they were not a sixty year old, married, ork couple.

When they finally got to the Emporium, they saw a familiar looking white Ford Spiral 115Ti already in a parking spot. Well, white was not quite the right color to describe as it had a light but greasy brown sheen to the color.

Hunter got out of the Ford, fixing up the collar of her own leather jacket and quickly closed the door. "There's a dry place you can park over there." she told them, pointing to a sheltered spot.

Without a word John quickly drove to where Hunter had pointed, making sure that his motorcycle was well out of the rain. The seat of his pants already felt uncomfortably moist from the drive over.

Just behind John came Hoss in his SAMAG Vinnig. The large truck was something that seemed built for the bad weather as it effortlessly pushed through the water drenched streets. The sewers and drains were already so backed up from the rain that even the sidewalks were flooded, with various articles of trash and similar debris floating by.

"Great day to be out, eh?" Hunter asked, walking over to John and Mina.

"Piss great." John muttered. The block was in the middle of a blackout, and it was very wide spread. His ability to connect to any wireless device felt like it had taken an incredible leap in the last few days. Four hundred meters had been the extent of his reach, but now John figured it had doubled at least.

Which mattered little now with the blackout and he could feel only a handful of wireless devices that had their own power supply.

"I've tried calling Little D, but he's not answering." Hunter told them as they walked towards the front of the store. Several pallets of sandbags were already waiting for them.

John was just about to try searching out Little D's commlink to call when the front door flew open and a dwarf came stumbling out. He had well cropped black hair and a bristly beard of matching color. He wore a black actioneer business suit that looked a little streaked from the rain.

"You Little D?" Hunter asked.

"Of all the fucking luck." the dwarf cussed. "Oh, sorry." he added when he noticed John and Mina there.

"Naw, is okay. They've heard worse." Hoss said.

"Right. Yeah, I'm Little D." the dwarf told them, "You the help?"

"Looks that way." Hunter said.

"Great. Well, I got devil rats inside." Little D grumbled, "Ya can help sandbag or deal with them."

"How many?" John asked.

"'Bout half a dozen, I think." Little D said.

"Don't let that fool you." Hunter added, "There could be more. They're great at hiding."

John pulled out his two Predators, the pistols chambering EX-Explosive rounds.

Mina also pulled out a handgun of her own, her Redline laser pistol.

"Just be careful in there. And watch your shots." Hunter advised as John led the way inside.

Water had already pushed its way through the door. Along with what trash had been carried in and exploded bags of soy powder, the linoleum covered floor was now a squishy mess. On a good day this would have been a higher class of store to visit, with better quality soy products and flavoring, but also more than one shelf with real food products. Along one wall were several vending machines, built to rely on AROs to advertise their products their fronts almost a bland steel gray in color with their product name silkscreened on them.

"Thought you'd've called a spirit or use magic." John said, holding his pistols ready as he looked around for any giant, hairless rats.

"Today's a bad day for that." Mina told him. "It's not a natural storm."

Behind them came the sound of a sudden spray of fluid. John was quick to spin about, bringing his Predators to bear on whatever might have made the noise.

"_Now! With new Grape Bu-Bu-Buzz Cola!_" and advert virus suddenly popped up, and John saw a devil rat scrambling its way out of the machine's can dispenser, it's pink skin tinted a purplish-brown as a punctured can of soda sprayed it.

John shot once with the Predator in his left hand. He hit the half meter hairless rat center mass, and when the slug exploded so did the devil rat.

"Gross." Mina said.

"We got lots more!" John yelled. He barely saw the movement as he spun about to shoot at another devil rat. This on he caught in the flank, the explosive slug tearing out at least a quarter of its body away and spreading shredded intestines through the muck.

"Got one!" Mina yelled.

John risked a glance over. He saw another devil rat with a third degree burn running down the side of its body.

Together the two worked their way through the store. The noise of John's Predators must have driven the devil rats into a frenzy as they kept coming out at them. One even jumped at Mina from a very high shelf, and while it was in midflight John caught it with a spectacular shot that left Mina dumbfounded. It took her a few second to realize that the exploded rodent had splattered its blood on her face.

Then came the calm. John's heart pounded in his chest, racing from an adrenalin high. Bad luck of the storm be damned when he had unloaded a dozen shots and only missed twice.

"Is that all of them?" Mina asked.

"Dunno." John said, "There's like fifteen of 'em."

"Look out!" Mina yelled.

Looking to where Mina pointed, John barely noticed and ducked a stream of fluid that came flying at his face. Then he saw the spitter.

It was a rat, harry and wet, and larger than the demon rats. Nose to tail it was easily longer than John was tall, with a pair of tiny horns just above its beady black eyes.

John's return was a shot from both Predators. The slugs tore into the giant mutant rat, blowing it to pieces when they detonated.

"I think I'm gonna be sick." choked Mina. She dropped her Redline as she ran for the door.

Holstering one of his Predators and grabbing the laser pistol, John followed.

The others had made a strong looking barricade against the water with the sandbags. Mina was doubled over those sandbags, and sounded like she had just finished throwing up.

"What happened in there?" Hunter asked.

"Uh, learned I probably shouldn't use explosive bullets on those things." John said.

"Got it." grunted Hunter as she dropped another sandbag into place.

"Well well, what have we here?" came a gruff voice.

"Sorry, we're closed today." Little D said.

Looking to who spoke, John five humans and two trolls, all wearing the colors of the Godz gang. He did not have a good feeling about this.

"Yeah, but we ain't got no cred." the same person said, "So we'll just help ourselves to everything you got!"

"Not happenin'!" Hunter yelled. Fast as lightning she brought her right hand up, palm facing the ganger like she was going to unleash some kind of power beam at him.

All John heard was a psst of a suppressed gunshot a moment before he heard a louder pop of an EX-Explosive round. Just before the ganger had even known he had been shot in the shoulder he was already falling down.

Most of the standing gangers started pulling weapons, so John grabbed Mina by the collar of her coat and yanked her back behind the wall of sandbags. He slipped on the wet concrete, falling down as he pulled her. He ended up rolling onto his back with her legs on his chest.

It sounded like the gangers were making popcorn. Mina shrieked when a sandbag exploded, spraying them both with sand with each gunshot.

"We'll cut ya a deal!" another ganger yelled, "Just walk away and we'll let ya live!"

"You mean surrender?" Hunter yelled.

"Yeah!"

"Okay, you surrender. We accept!" John yelled.

"Boo!" yelled a ganger, popping up from behind the wall of sandbags that Mina had been slumped over just seconds ago.

John could only look up as the ganger was about to bring a knife down on them. One hand was empty and both arms were pinned under Mina's legs.

The next John knew was the ganger's blood was mixed with the rain as it sprayed over him.

"Go! Go! Go!" Hunter yelled.

Like an Olympic athlete Hoss hurdled himself over the sandbags. Hunter was just behind him, a Predator of her own in hand. She shot several times, then there was no noise other than that of the falling rain.

"They gone?" John asked.

"Yup, they're gone." Hoss said, stepping over the wall of sandbags.

"You kids okay?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John said as he dug himself out from under Mina's legs. "Nice headshot on that guy."

"That wasn't me." Hunter told him.

Looking to Mina, John saw she had a Warhawk in her hands. When he checked his holster he found it empty.

"You okay?" Hunter asked softly, kneeling at Mina's side.

Mina looked like she was in shock. Her hands trembled as Hunter gently took the revolver from the young magician. John was eager to take his pistol back, but did not really take his eyes off of Mina.

"I… I…" Mina stammered, her eyes gazing off at something John could not see.

"She okay?" Hoss asked.

"Let's get her inside." Hunter said, grabbing Mina and helping her to her feet. "Hoss, you keep watch out here, just in case."

"Got it."

With an arm over his shoulders, John helped Mina walk into the slightly dryer store.

"Oh my, what happened to her?" Little D asked.

"Got chair or something?" Hunter asked back.

"I think so." the dwarf said as he hurried off.

John followed the others inside.

Little D wheeled a chair from a back office, sloshing water as he went. At least the seat was dry for Mina when she sat down. She looked like she was in complete shock.

"What's wrong with her?" John asked.

"I don't think she's actually killed anyone before." Hunter said, kneeling beside the young magician.

"She what?" Little D asked.

"All the jobs I've worked with her," Hunter said, "we never killed anybody."

"What about that gator?" John asked.

"It's different to some." Hunter told him. "That was an animal the first time. Then it was a bug spirit."

"Here you go." Little D said softly, handing Mina a bottle with a green liquid in it.

At first Mina did not take the bottle. Actually, it did not even look like she knew it was even there. She then greedily took it and started chugging on the bottle heavily.

John absently ran two fingers over his ear. He felt totally confused. He never reacted this way the first time he had to shoot to kill someone. Even then, that other ganger was out for his life. First he had been screaming some battle cry, the next his heart had practically exploded and left John splattered with blood. He had been shocked, yes, but not completely catatonic.

"His… His face…" Mina stammered. "I… I…"

"Don't think about it." Hunter said soothingly. "You did the best you could at the time." Gently she ran her fingers through the girl's hair.

"Hey, um, not meaning to be rude or anything, but I don't really have much cred to pay with." Little D told them. "You can help yourselves to whatever you want here, no charge."

"Thanks." Hunter said with a weak smile.

John left the women to meander around for a little. He had no idea what to say, and it seemed so simple to him. It was the ganger or him, and Mina acted. If her magic had not been acting wonky then she probably would have thrown some fire spell in his face instead of grabbing his big ass Ruger Super Warhawk. The huge revolver packed a pretty good punch on its own before considering the explosive rounds he used in it.

In the back John found a rack of some real fruit. Partially curious, John grabbed a bright red apple. Seeing that it looked clean enough he took a big bite out of it. It was really juicy, a mix of tart and sweet, and felt nothing like the apple wedges that came in the kids meals at McHugh's. He also realized that the real apple also tasted nothing like those wedges.

Eagerly John took another bite.

With his free hand he grabbed another apple for Mina, and headed back.

Mina must have been feeling a little better. Almost all of the half liter bottle was now empty, she was talking a little, but had now busted out into tears. When she saw John, she dropped the bottle and rushed him, quickly hugging him and holding tight.

John barely was able to keep hold of his apples. But he managed to wrap his arms around her.

"Don't take too long, we do have a job to do." Hunter said. "Little D's cool with us leaving our rigs here, so we'll carpool with Hoss in his truck."

With an extra six pack of juice bottles, none of which were red John noticed, they left Little D's Gourmet Emporium to head for the Hub.

Mina's mood seemed to have gotten worse as they went. She sat as far from John as she could, saying nothing as she looked out the window.

Hunter had sent John a message of advise, that it might be best to let Mina alone to her thoughts for the time.

With their commlinks in public mode they made the border crossing into the UCAS side of the Hub. Traffic was lighter than John expected it to be, but the rain was heavier and the weather looked like it had gotten even worse.

"So where're we supposed to meet this guy?" John asked after they had passed the border.

"Tower Of Babel's the best I got." Hoss said.

"Same here." Hunter added, "Guess we'll try the parking garage first, then the club."

Finding the building where the Tower Of Babel was located was not difficult. On a good day it would have been difficult to get there because of traffic.

The parking garage itself was almost empty. Hoss chose himself a spot that looked like it would be well sheltered from the storm, managing to get one of the few truly dry spots within the garage itself.

"We should take it careful here." Hunter said as they got out of the truck.

"Yeah, no knowin' what crap's comin' up 'cause of this storm." Hoss added.

John had just fixed his sword belt back on when there was a loud crash and someone's car alarm started blaring its horn and flashing various lights.

"What's that?" Hunter asked.

No one needed to answer, as what it was had decided to show itself. It was a blend of avocado green and three shades of brown, looked like it was part compost heap and part moving pile of shit, and it smelled like piss and shit that had been marinating for three months in summer heat.

And it was not just crap coming up out of a backed up sewer. It stood upright, taller than John, and started shambling towards them.

John was quick to pull his Predators, but suddenly lost his grip on them. His feet felt rooted to the concrete floor, his legs uncooperative to move.

Hearing several gunshots from Hunter's Predator managed to snap John back to his senses. He barely managed to evade a slimy appendage as it came lashing out at him.

"Firefly! We need your help!" Hunter yelled, unloading two more rounds into the squishy mound of crap.

At the moment he did not care what Mina was or was not doing. Particularly because it looked like she was doing nothing and the crap was shambling towards her.

Pulling his sword and taking a two handed grip, John lunged for the crap.

If there was any sentience to the walking mound of crap it must have figured John was no threat. When John's monofilament sword came down like an executioner's ax into its body it realized he was a real threat. A tendril lashed back out at John, smacking him hard and knocking him back a few meters. He slid further on the rain slicked concrete.

"Hoss! Now" yelled Hunter.

The troll rushed up and hammered the crap hard. Dazed as John felt from getting hit he still saw Hoss's fist connect. Instead of easily passing in like it were jell-o or clay, it looked like the blow had hit something as solid as rock.

Like it had been hit with a concussion wave, the pile of crap fell backwards, and fell apart in a sickening squishy sound.

"Okay, what the fuck was that?" Hoss asked.

"A spirit, I think." Hunter said.

John groaned as he peeled himself off the floor. His body ached when he moved.

"Ain't seen no spirit like that b'fore." Hoss said, inspecting what was left of the spirit of shit.

After regaining his feet John collected his sword. The blade looked pristine, not at all like he had used it to try and cleave a crap monster in half. He sheathed his sword.

"It was a water spirit." Mina said softly. "But it wasn't normal."

"Guys, we've got a problem." Hunter said. "Hoss, can ya come over here?"

John got a silent text from Hunter, saying, "Keep Firefly back."

Hoss carefully walked over to where Hunter was. "Awe shit." he cussed.

Fortunately John did not have to do anything. Mina just kept standing by Hoss's truck while he collected his Predators and holstered them. She actually looked like she was completely out of it, like she was stoned on dopadrine or warden or something.

"Well, let's go." Hunter said, walking back to Hoss's truck.

John heard the sound of another car's engine, and saw a deep magenta Eurocar Westwind pull around the corner. He rarely ever saw such an expensive car, though he figured they would be a lot more common in the Hub where the wealthy lived.

The imported sports car pulled into an empty parking spot of its own, its wiper squeaking against a dry windshield.

"What's he doing here?" Hunter asked.

"He who?" John asked.

After a car door closed, a man said, "Hey guys. What brings you out in this weather?"

"Was here to meet someone," Hunter said, "and no Dean, it's not you."

The driver was Dean Costello, a mafia hacker John knew. He also remembered that Dean had an apartment in the Hub as well.

"I see." Dean said, looking around. "Well, at least let me buy you all a drink in the Tower."

"Got nothin' else to do. Sure." Hoss said.

"Yeah, alright." John added.

"Don't forget to leave the heat behind, kids." Hunter told him.

"Yeah, yeah." John went as he pulled out his four heavy pistols and stashed them under the seat. He also made sure to leave his sword behind as well.

Mina said nothing. She needed a little prodding to come with them, but once they were walking she was leaning against John with an arm around him.

The Tower Of Babel was a night club, and this early in the evening there were only a handful of people. John was glad that there was no hassle with him and Mina coming in, though he was sure that a bartender or the wait staff would be keeping a close eye on the two of them.

The décor was simple yet expensive. The chairs and tables were all white and the floor and walls were of white marble. Even the bar itself was topped in white marble. The tall windows were etched with binary strings and code snippets, and in large letters was "Hello World." The lighting was subdued to a level of being comfortable while still being able to see clearly. The nightclub also had a respect for some privacy, with white noise generators discreetly placed all about the club.

That was the extent of the nightclub if you did not have any way of seeing or hearing augmented reality. Instead of the marbled ceiling tiles were nine more floors above for the Tower Of Babel that existed only in virtual reality. Then there were the walls, a cacophony of colors and sounds as the matrix traffic through the nightclub's node was interpreted from imperceptible raw code into various lights and sounds.

"So, how's life been treating you?" Dean asked once drinks and appetizers had been ordered.

"Got woke up at three in the morning for a weird-ass job Tuesday." John said before he took a sip of his blue colored, raspberry flavored drink.

"Don't be so melodramatic." Hunter said.

"Mmm, yeah. It was three-fourty-two in the morning." John amended.

"Turned out alright, though." Hunter added. "Good pay for a morning's work."

"Ah, so not a total waste of time." Dean commented.

"Naw. Saved a life." Hoss said.

"I… I can't…" Mina cried, breaking down into tears and bolting from the table.

Without a word John went after her. He managed to catch her just as she got to the bar.

"Hey, hold up!" John said, grabbing her by the arm.

"He said it so calmly." Mina sobbed, "And I… I…"

John pulled Mina into a hug, holding her tightly as she buried her face between her hands against his chest.

"How can you… just…"

Behind them one of the club goers started yelling. John tried ignoring him, and instead gave Mina an extra squeeze.

Pain blossomed across the back of John's head. Dazed, he stumbled and would have fallen over if Mina had not been right there.

"You need to leave, right now!" a new voice yelled.

Regaining his feet, John slipped free from Mina and turned to try and see who threw whatever it was that hit him in the head. A quick pat to the back of his own head told him he was not bleeding.

John saw one of the club patrons looking like he had gone psychotic. He had flipped over tables and was throwing drink glasses around.

"Watch it, asshole!" John yelled.

Another patron, one at the bar, screamed incoherently. Just as John turned to look at this new lunatic he saw the man's leg come up, and a new world of pain blossomed between his legs.

"Fuck you!" John heard Mina yell. Through the pain and stars in his vision he saw her slam her shoulder into the patron. Had he been a larger man he might have taken the blow, but instead she managed to knock him off his feet. They fell over onto the floor.

In his rage, the man slugged Mina in the stomach and shoved her off. This was just in time to receive the toe of John's shoe right up between the legs.

"Hit her again," John yelled, kicking again, "and I'll make sure," he kicked again, "you piss blood!"

"Cypher!" yelled a voice too close to John's liking.

"What?" John yelled, spinning with a clenched fist ready to strike. He hit something too hard to be a person.

Hunter was standing there, having caught his fist in her synthetic hand.

"He's down. You okay?" Hunter softly asked.

It was now John realized how hard his heart was pounding. Looking down at the psychotic man, John saw he was more interested in holding his own crotch now than whatever had sent him off into a rage in the first place.

"I… I'm fine." Mina meekly said. Slowly she stood back up. She did not look quite as good as she might have hoped, with a black eye already starting to show.

Hunter released his hand as the tension was leaving his body. Then the pain returned, and he managed to hop up onto a bar stool. It did not help the pain subside.

"We'll take it from here, ma'am." one of two men said. John had noticed them about, and had figured they worked for the nightclub. They picked the subdued rager up by the armpits and hauled him off somewhere.

"Here, hold onto this." the bartender said, handing John a chilled bottle of Hugo Natural.

"Thanks." John absently said, taking the bottle and putting it between his legs. The chill was a welcome sensation to his testicles.

Hoss and another man had the other psychotic rager subdued. The rager looked worse than Mina did, or John felt, but if he knew what the other man had gone through might have considered himself lucky having had a troll rough him up a little. They held the man until the same to nightclub workers came back to take the rager.

"Feeling better?" Hunter asked.

"Maybe in ten minutes." John groaned. Things still hurt a lot, and now he was feeling an urge to urinate.

As if things could not get any worse, the power went out. John's goggles blocked out a super bright flash of lightning just before the power went out with a loud pop. The only AROs that remained were a handful that pointed out the emergency exits.

Then came the rumble, like a freight train barreling past the nightclub. Windows rattled for several seconds before everything became dead quiet.

Before anyone could say a word there was another bolt of lightning, this one so close that John was briefly blinded, and there was no delay to the thunder. Several windows cracked and a few even shattered.

"Holy shit!" someone cussed after the thunder had passed.

If John was not seeing it with his own eyes he would not have believed it.

The Hub itself had lost power, but in the near distance there was a soft glow in the sky. Just across the street there was a building that was now half gone. Just gone, no wreckage or explosion. It just was not there.

In its place was the rocky face of a mountain. Indeed a whole mountain range could be seen. John knew it was not the Rocky Mountains since he was looking off to the northeast and the mountain range was due west.

"Whoa." Mina said softly.

"What is that?" Hoss asked.

No one else was saying a word. Too many people were stunned into silence as they stared out at the floating mountain range over the city of Denver. The only noise came from the splattering of rain that came in through the broken windows.

Among the patrons was a cubby elf wearing a charcoal trench coat. He had long brown hair tied back into a ponytail, and an array of weird knickknacks decorating him. "The Sipapu's opened to the astral world."

"The what?" Hunter asked.

"Sipapu." the elf repeated, turning to face her. His eyes bounced from Hunter, to John, then Mina. "I think I might have a job for you."

Feeling a little better, John slid off of his barstool to follow Hunter and Hoss back to the table where Dean was still sitting. Hoss and the other man also took seats at the table.

"Who's he?" John asked, still holding the chilled bottle between his legs.

"Take it easy, kiddo." Hunter said, "He helped out a little with that other raging lunatic."

John said nothing, but looked the man over closely. His commlink said his name was Mark Bailey, but he wondered if it was really real or not. His black hair was wet and slicked back, showing his dark brown eyes clearly. His clothing was simple and unremarkable. Unlike the elf, his build was rather slim. He almost looked unremarkable in general, until John noticed the silver chain and ornate cross he wore around his neck.

"I know him." Dean said, "We've worked together a few times, just like you and me, kiddo."

John did not feel reassured a whole lot.

"Call me Cherubael." the man said, offering a hand.

When it was obvious John was not going to shake it, Hunter took his hand. "Hope we can work together." she said.

"Me too." Cherubael said.

"Now to the details." the elf said. John now looked to his commlink and saw the name Aaron Drey. Aaron had a lot of weird things on him. Around his head was a copper band with some kind of runes engraved in it, which was tied Amerindian style with feathers and beads. Stitched to his coat was a dreamcatcher that held a Celtic cross at its center. Wrapped around one hand and wrist was a red silk ribbon with Japanese and some other kind of characters embroidered in gold colored thread.

"What we're seeing isn't quite really there." Aaron told them. "It's something called an alchera. A gateway between the metaplanes. I know where this one goes, to the mythical Ancient Pueblo world. There the spirits are called Kachina. The one I'd like you to go bring back is a Kachina by the name of Yuichotol."

"Will he be willing to come with us?" asked Hunter.

"She, and I really hope so." Aaron said, "Do your best, of course, but by no means should you kill yourselves trying. I'll pay you each seven thousand if you go and bring her back."

"And why can't you do it yourself?" John asked.

"I had no idea this was going to happen." Aaron told him, "I have a ritual I must prepare to perform upon your return."

"I guess so." Mina said. When John looked at her she only nodded.

"Seven thousand seems a little light for us to be risking our necks climbing up a mountain so we can bring a spirit back down with us." Cherubael said.

"I'm not liking it either." John added. It was not the climb that had him concerned, but his connection to the matrix and the resonance. Crossing some multidimensional gateway was sure to cut him off. If he really did end up going, at least this time it looked like he would not be stuck underground in a cramped tunnel.

"This certainly is an unknown." Hunter added, "Never got any training for something like this."

"How 'bout ten thousand?" John asked.

"Well, you guys certainly will stand out once you cross over," Aaron said, "but I'm certain those of you who are awakened won't find yourselves feeling oppressed like you are now." After a short pause he added, "How about eighty-five hundred?"

Cherubael chuckled. "I think the child's got the right number. Ten thousand." he said.

"And my magic." Mina added, "I'm not shamanic."

"Yes. Lord knows I'm weakened here because of this mana storm." Cherubael added.

Mana storm? Aside from the floating mountain range above the city this was just another thunderstorm as far as John knew.

"If she ain't going, I ain't." John said.

"Not good." Hunter said, "He might be young, but he's actually the one who carries the most guns out of all of us. And he's not that bad of a shot."

"Looks like we're going nowhere. Alright, ten thousand." Aaron said, relenting to the higher price.

Hoss simply nodded his agreement to the price.

"Right. So what does this Yuichotol look like?" Hunter asked.

"She's a large water serpent with blue and silver scales and crystal horns." Aaron said. "At the top of this building you should be able to enter the alchera. From there you'll need to find the Sipapu, the gateway from the underworld into the metaplane. It might look like a cave, but it's a structure made from piled up rocks. Once you notice it you'll be able to tell it's not natural. Inside is another door to gain entrance to the metaplane."

"So stepping through doesn't take us right there?" Hoss asked.

"Right." Aaron said. He took a napkin and unfolded it. Then he took out a felt tipped pen and drew a large circle and labeled it "astral." Within that circle he drew a smaller one and labeled it "our world."

"With me so far?" Aaron asked.

"Yeah." Hoss said.

John nodded. The pain in his crotch was pretty much gone now, so he opened the bottle to drink.

Aaron drew a second smaller circle within the first so it overlapped the second. In the body he labeled it "metaplane" and in the small area the two circles overlapped he wrote "alchera."

"The two planes don't quite exist in the same place at the same time." Aaron said, "That's where the alchera comes in. It's kind of influenced by both planes, and is what bridges the gap between the two."

"I think I get it." John said.

"The alchera touches this building, so you should be able to just go to the roof and climb up the mountain and find the Sipapu."

"Good, but we need to make a pit stop first." Hunter said.

"Fine, fine. Meet me back here when you get back."

"We'll see you there." Hunter said, standing.

They went back down to Hoss's truck, several flights of stairs worth since the power was still out and the elevators were not working. The adults largely talked, though Mina said nothing. John wondered if she was feeling alright.

Before actually collecting his handguns, John had to visit the public restroom. Mina apparently had the same need, as they met on the way back out. She barely looked at him before walking off back to Hoss's truck.

John collected his handguns in silence. He noticed Hoss had already collected his bow and quiver of arrows.

"Think that's a big enough gun?" Cherubael asked when John holstered his Warhawk.

"I hope so." John said, pulling out his Hatamoto II to put in its holster at his back.

"Just how many do you have?" Cherubael asked nervously.

"Six." John said matter-of-factly as he holstered his Predators.

"I only counted four." Cherubael commented as John was putting on his sword belt.

"Trust him, he's got six." Hunter said as she checked her own Predator.

"Yup." John said. With a twitch of both hands he revealed his Morrissey Élan holdout pistols.

"Right then, let's get going." Hunter said.

The power was still out, and John learned the hard way how much easier it was going down several flights of stairs compared to going back up. It was not the long climb back up that bothered John, it was still Mina. This time she was walking up ahead with Hunter rather than with him.

Everyone was quiet as they climbed back up. There was a bit more wireless activity that John could feel, and it kept with them with each flight of stairs. Once John was feeling bugged enough about it he tried accessing this extra activity. This failed.

Just as John was trying to think about what to do next about this extra wireless activity, he got a text from Hunter. It said, "I know you're sensing something more, but please don't try to decrypt it."

John felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. That feeling lasted just about all the rest of the way up.

"We've made it to the top." Hunter announced as she opened the door to the building's roof.

"Finally." John panted as he followed her outside and into the ice cold rain.

"Not quite." Cherubael said.

"Awe shit." John muttered when he saw the mountain.

"Hope the weather's better in that thing." Hoss said.

It was not, really. Wind was blowing the rain into the alchera, making the foot of the mountain slick and treacherous. After half an hour of climbing they managed to make it up to, what looked like to John, a cave surrounded by a pile of rocks.

"This the Sipapu?" asked Hunter.

"I think so." Cherubael said, "It's got an astral signature. Looks like a lodge."

"At least we'll be out of the rain in there." John muttered.

The entrance to the Sipapu was large enough for even Hoss to step through without having to duck. The inside was as miserable looking and feeling as the outside, the stone floor and walls slick and cold looking.

"Aaron said there'd be an entrance here into the metaplane." Cherubael said. "Now where is it?"

"I think it's up there." Mina said, pointing at a hole in the ceiling where light was pouring in. What was weird was that there was no rain coming through.

"Must be." Hunter said, "I'm not seeing any other way out besides the way we came in. I'll go first."

Hunter shot her left hand up towards the hole, using her grapple hand to pull herself up. Once she was part way up a robed arm came down through the hole. Hunter hesitated at first, but then took hold of the offered hand and was quickly pulled up.

"Hey! Who's up there?" John yelled.

"I think it's alright." Hunter called back down. "Hoss, help the kids up next.

"Right." Hoss said, lacing his fingers together to make a foothold.

"I'll go." John said, stepping into Hoss's hands and getting easily hefted up to the hole. Like with Hunter, a hand came down to help him up. It was scary how easily it pulled him up and through.

It was not exactly a man as John had expected. It looked like a man, barefoot and wearing a simple brown robe. But instead of a head was a white skull floating in its place.

"Uh, friendly?" John asked. The floating skull head deal was really making him nervous.

The white skull silently nodded.

"We need some room." Hunter said.

"Yeah, okay." John said, stepping back but keeping his eyes on the stranger.

The sun was high in the sky despite how late it really was in the evening. The air was not too warm, but quite comfortable compared to the rainstorm he had just been in.

To the south John could somewhat see the skyline of Denver below him, hazy with clouds and mist. It was, however, the view to the north that was spectacular. Rugged mountains dotted with forests and crystal blue lakes were laid out before him. A wild and untamed wilderness, and maybe how the Rocky Mountains might have looked ten thousand years ago.

"Wow." was all John could say.

"It's beautiful." Mina said softly, stepping up beside him.

"Yeah." agreed John, though he was now looking at Mina instead.

There was a sudden scrambling in John's pocket, like a mouse had suddenly woken up there.

"What's wrong?" Hunter asked.

"I don't… Whoa!" John cried out when a black object streaked out lightning fast.

"What was that?" asked Hunter.

"I don't know." John said, checking his pocket. Everything seemed okay until he realized that his yokujin drone was missing. "Laserbeak's missing!"

"What, that tiny drone of yours?" Hunter asked.

"What's missing?" Cherubael asked as he climbed up through the hole.

"Laserbeak. It's a minidrone I've had for like the last three months." John said.

A bird squawked as it alighted on a tree branch above them. It was pure black and roughly sixty to sixty-five centimeters in length, and a large bill. From the undergrowth behind that tree came three gray wolves, and a large looking black bear.

"Uh, Hunter," Cherubael said nervously, "I think we've got a problem."

"What're you talking…" Hunter started to say. John figured she saw the animals.

It was weird, though. They were just there. No growling or squawking from the animals. Then there was something that felt familiar about them.

"Um… Sit!" John commanded.

The wolves, which had been standing there panting, sat back on their haunches. With a grunt the bear rocked back into a more upright sitting posture.

"Did those animals just do what you told them to do?" Hunter asked.

John held out his hand, reaching out to the raven with his mind like he was calling to Laserbeak.

With a flutter of its wings the bird flew down to alight on John's outstretched hand.

"How'd you do that?" Cherubael asked.

"It's my missing drone." John said, looking over the raven in wonder. "I sent a command to the drone to come to my hand, and it did."

"And those other animals are yours?" Cherubael asked, "I didn't see you come in with so many drones."

"They're not all drones." Hunter said. "Looks like Laserbeak's now a raven."

"They're, um, like agents." John said.

"They aren't the only ones. The ice I have running in a commlink's a wolf, too." Hunter told them.

Turning to look, John saw a red furred wolf standing next to Hunter.

But that was not all that was different. Hunter's hair, which was normally tied into a simple ponytail, was now adorned with half a dozen large feathers that looked like they were really dark brown or black. On top of that, her left hand was flesh and blood instead of cybernetic.

"Yeah, your hand's normal." John said.

Hunter checked her hands. "Flesh and blood. Been a while." she mused.

Quickly Hunter lashed out with her left hand, something John had seen her do before when she would launch her grapple hand.

Her left hand flew from her hand, her wrist distending and becoming thin, like a stretched out piece of chewing gum. She grabbed a rock and her hand flew back. Once this was all done, her arm looked just fine.

"What I thought." Hunter said, "All of my other implants are working just fine."

"That was really weird." John said, his eyes still locked on her left hand.

"This is a really weird place." Cherubael said.

"I think it's the metaplane." Mina said.

Looking over to Mina, John saw that she too had a silvery gray wolf standing next to her. At least it usually looked like a wolf. Its appearance sometimes seemed to flicker like a bad hologram, taking on a more daemonic and heavily armored appearance normal for her own spirits before reverting back to being a silvery gray wolf. John decided he would rather want to see the hulking armored giant of a form over the wolf.

"What's wrong with your spirit?" Cherubael asked.

"It's this place." Mina said, "It's changing how it looks. I… I think it's still as strong."

"Firefly, how're you feeling, magic wise?" Hunter asked.

"Better now."

Hoss grunted as he pulled himself out of the hole. It looked like even the floating skull headed guy was a bit strained pulling the troll up.

"We'll give you a minute, if you want." Hunter said to him.

"Naw, I'm good." Hoss said, straightening up to his full two meters and a lot height. He did not even sound winded from the climb.

"So which way we going?" John asked.

The floating skull guy pointed off in a direction deeper into the metaplane. It looked like there was a seldom used path.

"Further in. Makes sense." Hunter said.

"Let me call a… spirit first." Cherubael said. After a few seconds he said, "Something's off. I think the plane's causing a problem."

"What's off?" Hunter asked.

"I tried calling a few spirits." Cherubael said, "None answered."

"Firefly? Can you conjure a spirit?" Hunter asked.

"I… I can try." she said.

From behind his goggles, John closed his eyes and concentrated on compiling another sprite. It felt weird, like he was mentally pulling a large dead dog out of a pool of tar.

"My Lord." Cherubael said in a hushed tone.

Having felt the sprite arrive, John opened his eyes. Perched on the tree branch was a raven, but resting on his hand was still the raven that was Laserbeak.

"That raven just appeared out of thin air." Hunter said a bit more calmly, "Like if you've ever seen a hologram go pixilated and vanish. Well, this was the same in reverse."

John imagined the raven sprite flying down to land on his shoulder. The new bird did just that.

"Hmph. I can't call one either." Mina told them. She really did not sound happy.

"Well, if we're set?" asked Hunter.

With a thought John sent his ravens to the air. Through the one that was Laserbeak he was still able to bring up an ARO and see through its eyes. It was different this time, though, the normally crisp edged object being fuzzy on the fringe. It was like looking into some divination pool from a fantasy trid. Did the metaplane have something to do with this too?

The gray wolves and black bear followed along with. They did not crowd around the others as they walked, always staying just behind him.

Hunter led the way. They skirted the edge of a forest that blanketed the base of an imposing mountain.

Through Laserbeak's eyes John saw small settlements, frequently next to small lakes of sapphire blue water. One of which they were walking towards. It was pretty much in the direction that freaky floating skull head had pointed out for them.

Both ravens circled high above. Below them was a cornfield with people attending to the crops. When Laserbeak got a closer look, flying lower towards the corn, he saw that they were not really people. Many had skin in shades of yellow to white, but some were even blue, and their clothing looked like it was made from the husks and silk of corn.

"Those birds giving you any info?" Hunter asked.

"There's weird people in the corn fields," John said, "but they look peaceful. There's a bunch of 'em. And 'bout a dozen huts."

In the distance John could hear music, a singular flute. When they came around a bunch of trees they saw the musician.

He looked like he was an Amerindian. He was tall, with large red plumes tied into his long hair. He wore soft looking leathers, and had a satchel on his back.

Hunter stopped first, with the animals stopping with them.

When the Amerindian got close he stopped playing his flute. "Welcome, travelers." he said, his voice carrying no hint of an accent. "Sorry I took my time getting here."

"Who are you?" Hunter asked warily.

"I'm Kokopelli, and I'm answering his summons." the Amerindian said, pointing to Cherubael with his wooden flute.

"Sorry, but you're not what I expected." Cherubael said.

"Of course not. Your own spirits won't hear your calls." Kokopelli told them. "I did, and chose to come. Your summons sounded too interesting to pass up."

"Then why'd my spirit come?" Mina asked.

"Ah, little one, your guardian demon must be bound to you to make it here." Kokopelli said.

"Demon?" Cherubael asked, looking at Mina.

John was about ready to pull his Warhawk and try commanding his wolves to attack Cherubael when Kokopelli spoke up.

"Oh, come now, I know neither of you work shamanic magic." the Amerindian said, "It's quite clear to me you both see and use magic quite differently. My apologies, I meant no harm, but surely even you can see that wolf of hers is no beast spirit."

"You certainly don't seem like any spirit I've seen before." Hoss said.

Kokopelli smiled, "I rarely travel beyond the planes of the people. I sometimes help those looking for guidance or knowledge, but I must admit that you're the first who aren't shamans I've met like this. Especially you two." He pointed to Hunter, then John. "You two aren't even magical."

"Well, if you're offering guidance and such, maybe you can tell us where we can find a kachina by the name of Yuichotol." Hunter said.

"Not really." Kokopelli said, "But you were already headed in the right direction."

John did not know whether to believe Kokopelli or not. At least his answer was not so mysterious as to bring up more questions than it answered.

"Well then, I guess we keep on walking." Hunter said.

The walk was rather easy. The ground was not rocky and the air sweet smelling and not too hot. There was also a more gentle breeze. It was a far cry from the cold and lousy weather Denver was having right now. Kokopelli played his flute as they walked, and though he had never heard the tune before it did sound pleasant.

A bolt of lightning cracked the sky, and the thunder rumbled loudly. It easily drowned out Kokopelli's flute, but briefly. Maybe the storm was not so far away as John thought.

There were other villagers as they approached. These looked human enough, compared to the others out in the cornfield. Brightly colored beads and various bird feathers decorated their hair.

The village itself looked like it was from some old trid about how Amerindian life was hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. In front of one hut were fish on a rack, smoking over a soft fire. Next to another hut was someone working a potter's wheel. John had to remind himself more than once that these were not people, but what Aaron Drey had called kachinas, or spirits.

With a thought he called his ravens back to him. One perched on either shoulder. Oddly enough they did not feel as heavy as John expected them to be.

"So where do we go from here?" Cherubael asked as they reached the edge of the village.

"I guess we just ask a local." Hunter said. She stepped up to the kachina at the potter's wheel, saying, "Pardon, but do you…"

Apparently the kachina had not even noticed Hunter until she spoke. He jumped back from his work, yelling something John could not understand.

"Uh oh." Cherubael said.

Kokopelli stopped playing his flute.

"What just happened?" Mina asked nervously.

"Not a clue. But whatever it is it's not good." Cherubeal said.

"I think we've got a bigger problem." Hoss said.

It looked like they did. Many of the kachina had grabbed spears and bows, and none of them seemed happy to see John and the others. He might not have been able to understand the words, but the tone of their voices carried volumes.

"They know you're not natural to this world, nor on a spirit quest for knowledge." Kokopelli said.

"You will wait here." one of the kachina said, holding a spear towards Hunter.

"We just gonna stand here?" Hoss asked.

Hunter, who had not raised her hands, said, "I know we can take 'em, but I don't think it'll be a good idea. If we've gotta fight, no lethal force."

"No problem." Cherubael said.

John kept his hands over his stomach, ready to quickly slip them into his jacket to pull his Predators if he needed to. His holdouts still held stun rounds, but five shots from each might not be enough.

Off in the distance John heard thunder rumble. Could they still be hearing the storm over Denver?

Two more Amerindians walked up. They looked similar to the kachina, except taller and much more muscular. They both carried spears. The two also looked like they were twins.

"Why are you here?" one of the twins asked.

"You do not look like you belong here." the other said, not looking too pleased.

"We're looking for someone." Hunter said.

"They are travelers from another world. They passed from beyond the underworld to come here." Kokopelli added.

"And what of the corn maidens?" the second one angrily asked, "What did you do to them? Your weapons look dangerous enough, surely you used them to bring the lightning with you."

"We didn't bring nothing!" John yelled back, and promptly got two spears pointed in his face.

"Lightning strikes the cornfields, scattering the corn maidens," the first one said, pointing towards the corn field, "and we find strangers in our village. Were you here to take our corn from us?"

"We don't want anything with your corn or maidens." John countered. He chanced a look to where the twin was pointing, but his eyes stayed on the now barren field where once there was a field of growing corn.

"The youth is honest." Kokopelli said, "I was with them when the lightning struck."

"We're here looking for a kachina by the name of Yuichotol." Cherubael said.

"Yuichotol. The Horned Water Spirit." the first one said.

"Sounds like her. Our business is with her and her alone." Hunter said. "You obviously know of her. Maybe we can work something out."

"What do you have in mind, golden one?" the first twin asked.

"Well, for starters you can call me Hunter." Hunter said, "We can try tracking these corn maidens down for you if you can help us track down the Horned Water Spirit."

The twins both looked over John and the others. Then they looked at each other and nodded.

"I am Ahayuta. He is my brother, Matsilema." the first twin said, resting the butt of his spear by his feet. "If you can find them we will help."

The other kachina lowered their weapons.

John relaxed his hands.

"We too must look for Yuichotol." Matsilema said, "We know this land, so it will be easier for us."

"Bring back the corn maidens and we will share with you what we find about the Horned Water Spirit." Ahayuta added.

"Right then, let's get to it." Hunter said as she started walking towards the corn field.

John was a bit pressed to keep up at first. He was, however, glad to put some distance between him and the village of upset kachina.

"We'll split up so we can cover more ground." Hunter continued, "Firefly, Cypher, you two check north. Hoss, south. Cherubael and I will check near the lake.

"Um, can I go with you?" Mina asked. John wondered what was up.

Hunter sighed. "Alright, you and me. Cypher, you okay with that?"

"Don't think I got a choice." John muttered.

"I'll help too." Kokopelli offered, "The big guy alone is sure to scare the corn maidens. With me along, maybe they won't be so scared."

"Fine by me." Hoss said.

North put the lake to their right as John and Cherubael walked. With a thought his ravens took flight, and the gray wolves that felt like were his data and crack sprites were tasked to scout ahead for the corn maidens. The other wolf and bear silently walked behind them.

"Something's bothering you, isn't it?" Cherubael asked after a few minutes of walking.

"Lots of things." John replied, more intent on what Laserbeak saw or his animal sprites sensed.

"I mean about you and Firefly. You two having a lover's quarrel?"

"It's not like that." John said, now wishing that Cherubael would just shut up and watch more for any corn maidens instead.

"Well, you're young. You probably haven't figured out that no relationship's perfect. Fights happen, but it's how you resolve them that's important. God knows how hard it can be sometimes."

"Why're you getting so preachy?" John asked as he stepped around a large boulder that was at the edge of the barren field. Ahead he could feel his two sprites' excitement at finding something.

"You look like a troubled youth." Cherubael said. "You and Firefly both. I'm not gonna stop until I've helped. And no, me shutting up isn't helping you."

John pulled his sword out to swipe at some weeds that were as tall as he was. The monofilament edge cut them with ease.

"She's been acting all… girly today." John said, "I just don't get the deal."

"Well, she is a girl."

"It's not that." John swung with his sword again.

"She's never acted like this before?"

"Nope."

"So did something happen?"

John thought about it as he absently swiped his sword at more weeds, half clearing a path so he could see.

"I guess." John said sullenly. "But it's not like it's happened before."

"What happened?" Cherubael asked softly.

John stopped, taking a few deep breaths before saying, "We were helping out this dwarf, Little D, before the Hub. Hunter and Hoss sandbagged and Firefly and I dealt with devil rats inside. After the rats were dead we went back out."

Cherubael said nothing as John replayed things in his mind. With his sword in his left hand he let the blade rest on the ground. "The power was out," John continued, "and I… these gangers came. Thought they could rob the place. I… We… We hid behind sandbags when they pulled guns. Then..."

Without saying more, John pulled his Warhawk from its holster. He held it loosely, his index finger outside the trigger guard as he looked at its cylinder.

"You killed one of them?" Cherubael asked.

"Couldn't. Firefly was on top of me. But I've shot people before and it's never bugged her."

"Shot and killed?"

"Yeah."

"I guess Firefly did, then?"

John sighed. "Guy came at me with a knife. Then half his head… Poof."

"I'm thinking you've had a rougher life than her." Cherubael said, and John felt a hand on his shoulder. "No, I'm not going to preach about breaking the Sixth Commandment. Besides, it sounds like she did it in self defense, and there's no bloodguilt in that."

"Then why's she acting so weird about it?" John asked, looking up to Cherubael. He guessed what Cherubael meant by 'bloodguilt.'

"I'm not the best to ask about a girl's mind." Cherubael said with a wry smile. "But think about this. Has she ever killed anyone before?"

John thought about it. Mina had certainly been aggressive before, and shooting devil rats with her laser pistol did not seem to bother her at all. She even killed one or two of them. With her fire magic she had seriously burned people before. "I don't think so." he finally said.

"First time's the hardest, or so I'm told." Cherubael told him. "But enough of that, I think I see someone."

Looking to where Cherubael was pointing, John saw what might have been a corn maiden. Cherubael led the way, approaching slowly. Behind her in the woods John could sense his two wolf sprites.

Cherubael knelt down on one knee. "Are you a corn maiden?" he asked in a soothing tone.

The figure nodded.

"Ahayuta sent us to find you. To help you return." Cherubael said. "Are there others nearby?"

The figure shook her head.

John queried his wolves that were still scouting about. They knew about the one Cherubael had spotted, but could not otherwise sense any others.

"I think she's telling the truth." John said, "My wolves haven't found any others but her."

"Well, we'll make lots of trips if we have to." Cherubael said. "Would you like us to walk you back?"

Tentatively the figure came out from behind the tree she was hiding behind. She looked like one of the figures he had seen in the cornfield. Her clothes looked like they were made from corn husks, bright green with thin yellow strands of corn silk weaving them together, and her hair was as golden as the same silk. Her skin was the oddest of all, being a pale blue in color and lined in a very dark blue that gave her the appearance of being made up of blue corn kernels. She was maybe a few centimeters taller than John, and she was barefoot.

The corn maiden looked nervously at John. Realizing he was holding his sword and Warhawk still, John put them away. She seemed to calm down some.

The walk back was quiet. The corn maiden was eerily silent as she walked between John and Cherubael. She seemed weirded out by the animals, but as they all still walked behind John she seemed to be okay with them.

"Looks like the others have had more luck than us." Cherubael said as they stepped back out into the barren field.

The others were already back, along with many corn maidens. But what amazed John the most was what was happening to the barren field.

John had expected the cornfield to be back to normal as soon as the corn maidens returned. What was happening looked a lot more amazing to him. Where the corn maidens walked the corn grew back. Not like some computer painter's airbrush where fully grown stalks of corn magically appeared. No, each stalk of corn burst from the ground and quickly grew up from a sprout to two meters in height in a matter of seconds.

This was quite apparent as their lone corn maiden walked back into the field. Like a ripple of water more corn stalks grew up from the ground.

Cherubael led the way around the cornfield as they walked back to the village.

"Have any luck?" Hunter asked.

"We only found one." Cherubael said.

John's ravens landed on his shoulders.

"Found several ourselves." Hoss said.

"There may be one or two missing, but I think they'll find their way back soon enough." Kokopelli told them.

"I think most might've ran for the lake." Hunter said. "I hope Ahayuta and Matsilema are okay with that."

"We are." Ahayuta said as the twins stepped from seemingly nowhere. At least John thought it was Ahayuta.

"We've found where we think Yuichotol is, too." Matsilema said.

"Between those mountains," Ahayuta said, pointing to the northwest, "is a valley where the Horned Water Spirit has a lair. There is an obvious and not to difficult path, and it ends, in your words, a moraine just before you enter the valley. There are tall cliffs and many waterfalls around it, and her cave is at the far side."

"Thanks. Not meaning to be rude but we should be going." Hunter said.

"May you find the answers you seek." Ahayuta told them as they left.

Ahayuta never did say how long of a walk it would be, and it certainly was long. The trail he had indicated slowly climbed up the side of a mountain, never switching back the higher they went. At least Kokopelli's flute was a pleasant distraction from the time taken. Even once along the way he offered everyone some venison jerky from his pack. Only Cherubael declined.

Soon they reached what John figured was the edge of the alchera. The city of Denver was clearer below them, and the Rocky Mountains he knew barely visible in the distance. It was also quite colder again.

Then the trail turned inward towards the interior of the metaplane, around the mountain and finally the entrance of what John hoped was the right valley.

They were not the only ones on the trail. Six large men, looking like Amerindians except their skin was tinged with blue, stood at the far end of the trail. They pulled water from a nearby creek like streamers, pulling and weaving it with their fingers like it was cotton until it really did look like cotton. Once they were done they set the newly made clouds to the wind, pushing them towards the alchera and into Denver.

Most striking of all was that they towered over everyone, even Hoss. John wondered if the troll now had an idea of how tiny John felt compared to him. These giants had to be at least four meters tall themselves.

"Hope they won't bother us." Cherubael said softly.

They walked on.

A guttural laugh greeted them from nowhere. "She's been gone a long time from here, puppets." the voice said with a croak. "Best you go back to your world. I'll join you later."

"Don't know about you guys, but I'm not about to turn around now." Cherubael said.

"Naw, not goin' back just yet." Hoss said.

"Be ready for anything, guys." Hunter told them, "This ain't gonna be easy."

"This work's too much." complained one of the blue skinned giants as they got closer to him. He sat down with a heavy crunch of gravel underneath his buttocks. "Would you like some venison jerky?" he asked, pulling out several massive pieces of dried meat from a pouch at his waist.

"Thanks, but no." Hunter said.

John shook his head.

"How 'bout some gold, then?" the giant asked.

"I… I don't think so." Mina said. Her reluctance made John wonder if he had heard any stories about spirits and gifts, and getting nothing but trouble in return.

The giant groaned as he took to his feet. "Well that ain't gonna do at all." he said.

"Keep your distance." Kokopelli offered.

"Not a problem!" Hunter returned as she pulled out her own Predator. As the giant brought a massive fist down she shot at its face. She managed two shots before she had to dive away from the giant's fist.

From behind them John heard Hoss's bow twang. It was just as he was drawing his Warhawk that the troll's arrow struck the giant in the chest, exploding after half of the missile had already disappeared in its flesh.

"Impressive!" cried Kokopelli.

"How many more of those you got?" Hunter asked.

"Nine." Hoss said, readying another arrow. "Got ten more that don't explode after that."

"Great. Time to haul ass."

And so they did. Two more giants like the first got in their way. Against the first Hunter went left and John right, getting off three shots between them before Hoss shot it with another explosive arrow. This same tactic worked against even the third one.

"Careful. Cloud Swallowers are usually quite crafty." cautioned Kokopelli as they climbed over a moraine of gravel and boulders to enter the valley. "Might not be so easy with the others."

"What we need to find is the source of that voice." Cherubael said, "If he's the boss, the rest might just capitulate."

"You mean, give up?" John asked.

"Yes."

The valley itself felt out of place. The ground was softer, more like a marsh and almost like a swamp as they walked.

"Look out! Duck!" Cherubael yelled.

An eagle's cry pierced the sky just as John dropped almost flat to the ground. He heard Mina shriek as something massive passed just over them.

Looking up he saw what looked like a golden eagle, except it was quite a bit larger. Figuring it had just dive bombed Mina, he brought up his Warhawk and squeezed off two rounds at it.

It looked like both shots hit the large bird, one slug exploding in its belly and the other blowing off its right wing entirely.

"You leave her the fuck alone!" John yelled at the falling dead bird.

The air around them felt tingly. Then John saw another similar bird fly over them. This one was higher and it did not look like it had made a diving run at them.

"Fuck you!" John heard Mina yell. He glanced back just in time to see a gout of intense flame leap from an outstretched hand at the bird. It almost looked like it would be an impossible shot, even as the bird tried to careen away from the stream of fire. Like a living serpent of flame it snaked after the bird.

"Impressive, young sorceress." Kokopelli said.

The spell itself must have been impressive. Half incinerated to the bone the bird fell to the valley floor.

John now wished that he could use his complex forms here, that he looked like his icon with all of his matrix abilities at his disposal instead of his sprites.

"Now I see why you said to not get between them." Cherubael said.

"That bird… did a… bolt of… lighting…" Mina panted.

"That's not all!" boomed a voice.

Thunder rumbled and the wind picked up something fierce. John went flat to his belly when pebbles started flying at him.

Wirelessly John got a message from Hunter. It read, "Use smartguns to try and shoot the giants."

With his free hand John did his best to draw one of his Predators. Like before he was able to thread a complex form to use the smartgun system built into the handgun. It was a weird sensation seeing from the pistol's point of view.

Face in the dirt, John swung his Predator up to try and get a shot at one of the blue skinned giants. He thought he could see one, laughing at them by the looks of it. All he really had was the targeting data from the smartgun, so he took his best aim and fired.

The shot missed.

Through the roar of the wind John heard another gunshot ring out. It looked like the giant managed to evade this one too.

John was already lining up another shot, trying to guess where the giant might jump to. He shot, and the slug missed.

Two more gunshots sang, and it looked like the last slug hit the giant. It went down, but John could not guess at whether the shot could have been fatal or not.

The wind continued to roar.

"Any one of those giants could be making this wind!" Cherubael yelled.

"This wind's really bothersome. Let me see if I can help calm it down." Kokopelli yelled.

Soon the wind died down from a roaring torrent to a strong breeze.

"Everyone alright?" Hunter asked.

As he carefully stood, John said, "I think… ffff." John could not breathe and he had a terrible pain in his gut. All he could do was fall to his knees as his body desperately tried to fill his lungs with air.

"She's been gone a long time from here, puppets." a strange voice croaked. "Best you go back to your world. I'll join you later."

"Not happenin'!" bellowed Hoss, and John heard the twang of his bow. It must have been one heck of a good shot as he heard a noise unlike any he had heard before. It was almost like a squeal of some kind.

Looking up from his own feet, John saw a tall frog-like person. It had a frog's head and green skin, wore a robe of woven grass that was still green and alive, and carried a wooden staff its webbed hands.

The frog man waved his staff at them, and for an instant John thought he was going to pass out. Like an old cartoon bird it ran off, leaving a trail of dust behind it.

"How's everyone?" Cherubael asked with a groan.

"Ow." Hoss replied with a painful groan of his own.

"I'll live." Hunter added.

"Fine." John gasped, finally catching his breath from the blow to his gut.

"Wonder what's gotten into the frog sorcerer." Kokopelli said. It sounded like he was completely unaffected by whatever it was the frog man had done.

When Mina said nothing, John looked over to her. She looked exceptionally pissed off.

"We got company." Hunter said.

Looking back John saw three more blue skinned giants. They looked like they were being extra cautious after what happened to their kin.

"Watch out above!" Hunter yelled.

John looked up to see another of those large birds coming down at them. He brought up his Warhawk and fired at it, the weapon clicking on the second shot.

It looked like the bird stopped dead in midair, and plummeted straight down.

"Wow." John said, marveling at the luck of his shot.

"Cypher, check your loads." Hunter said, squeezing off two shots at the giants. "We'll give you some cover to get passed those giants. You track down the frog sorcerer and deal with him. Get what info you can about Yuichotol."

"It's not gonna be that easy." Mina said.

John holstered his Predator and popped the cylinder on his Warhawk. All six rounds had been spent. Checking his pockets he found the extra magazines for his Predators and Morrissey Élans, and a few loose shells for his Hatamoto II, but no speed loader for his Warhawk. He slapped the cylinder back and holstered his empty Warhawk.

"I hit it good with an arrow. He's hurtin' really bad like." Hoss told them as he nocked another arrow.

"I'll give you a little help." Kokopelli added.

John pulled out both of his Predators to check their ammo. "What the?" he went when the smartgun reported full magazines.

"The used ones are in your pocket." Kokopelli said.

"Uh, thanks." John said, not exactly sure what to make of it. He holstered his pistols and hoped the spirit was on the level.

A good wind picked up, blowing a great amount of dust at the giants. Without waiting for an explanation John ran for it. He could feel his sprites close at hand as they followed. He could hear more gunfire from Hunter, and the zip of an arrow as it flew overhead.

"It'd better be worth the ten grand!" Mina yelled. It sounded like she was not too far behind.

Getting past the giants seemed easy enough. Hunter apparently did an amazing job of giving them coverfire.

"So how do we find this frog thing?" Mina asked stiffly.

With a thought John sent a call to Laserbeak. The raven had not gone very far, and through its eyes John got a literal bird's eye view of the valley. At the far end it could see a cave. Nowhere else was there much to see, aside from several flowing creeks, a few ponds, and some very high cliff faces.

"There's a cave that way." John said, pointing.

"Sure it's not using magic?" Mina asked. John thought this was something he should be asking.

The valley felt more like a marsh than something you would find in the Rockies. The ground was soft and the air felt damp, but smelled sweet.

As they got closer to the cave they could hear a rock being banged against another rock. Carefully they peeked in, and there they saw the frog sorcerer banging a sharp looking rock against what appeared to be a massive wooden dragon's skull with a set of crystal horns.

John pulled out his Predators, and with both pistols aimed at the frog sorcerer he stepped out and yelled, "Hold it right there!"

The frog stopped and looked at him. John could now see Hoss's arrow still stuck in his shoulder, though it seemed to be acting like it was not even there.

As soon as it looked away, raising its rock to bash the wooden skull again, John squeezed the triggers.

Nothing happened. In fact, his pistols felt soft and squishy in his hands now.

"Mother fucker!" John yelled, dropping his gooey pistols and pulling his sword. With a double handed grip he rushed the frog sorcerer, bringing the blade over his head and down for a heavy chop.

With a single hand the frog sorcerer caught the sword by its monofilament blade. With a twist he broke the sword.

Dumbfounded, John did not see the kick that sent him back out of the cave. Through blurred eyes he saw Mina crouched just outside the mouth of the cave, cringing in pain and fear.

"_Get that fucker!_" John silently sent to his bear and wolf sprites.

Apparently unaffected by whatever the frog sorcerer was doing, the sprites charged past John. Lightning crackled around the bear, and it howled it's pain. Like the angry real world version, it reared up and brought a paw down on the frog sorcerer. It broke the frog's arm with the blow.

The wolves all ran about, one would nip at the frog sorcerer's foot while another would go for its other arm. When one feinted an attack, another came around and bit heavily on a leg.

One wolf cried out, whimpering as the frog sorcerer managed to get a hold of it and bash it against the cave wall.

"F… Fuck you!" John heard Mina yell. His head lying on the ground, he saw her holding her laser pistol shakily in one hand. He was not sure if she pulled the trigger or not.

His head spinning, John could not bring himself back to the frog sorcerer and his sprites. He could feel their pain, like their code had been damaged but not completely disrupted. What he could also feel was them no longer fighting, like their task had been completed.

"I think it's dead." Mina said softly. She collapsed by John's side.

"So this's what the young folk do these days?" he heard Kokopelli ask.

"He wouldn't go quietly." John said.

"Never thought he would." Kokopelli said.

"There you are." Hunter said.

A pair of hands helped John up. His legs felt like rubber as he tried to stand. Mina did not look any better than he felt.

"So what happened?" John heard Cherubael ask.

"The frog was trying to break that skull." John said, gesturing at the wooden skull with the crystal horns in the cave.

"What's so special about this?" asked Hoss as he stepped into the cave. "Just looks like some carved wood."

"Oh, it's much more than that." Kokopelli said. "And don't forget these." He handed John his Predators.

They looked just fine and felt heavy and firm in his hands. John holstered them without question.

"I can see magic in it." Cherubael said, "It might've been a spirit vessel."

"Yuichotol." Hunter said, "Serpent with crystal horns. Skull looks 'bout right."

"So how're we getting it back?" Hoss asked.

John looked at the skull and the rest of the cave within. He saw a lot of broken pieces of stone and wood, and if they were intact could have well made up an entire skeleton for a serpent or something similar. There were also woven blankets about the floor with offerings of various foods including smoked fish and venison, gold, silver, and a multitude of beads.

"Can't you carry it?" John asked.

"Yeah, but where?" Hunter asked back. "Denver disappeared back there."

John's heart did not know whether to sink into the pit of his stomach or to lurch into his throat. If they could not see Denver, then chances were they could not return.

"Not to worry." Kokopelli said, "I think the word is, 'I have your travel plan right here.'"

John was just about to ask what he meant when the rock beneath him disappeared. The next thing he knew he was sitting in the middle of a very large table.

Everyone else was there, too. Mina had fallen half on top of John, her head hitting his stomach.

"Get off! Get off!" Cherubeal cried.

Grabbing Mina's hand, John scrambled off the table, passing between two very stunned and disoriented looking high level wageslaves.

"This way!" Cherubael said. He had an arm around Hunter as he led the way out a set of very nice looking double doors.

It took an extra moment, but John realized the power was on and he could feel the matrix around him again. With some thought he was able to push aside all of the extra crap he usually ignored in the way of signal traffic.

"Hope you ain't tired yet, kid." Hoss said from behind them. "We ain't in the Tower Of Babel here."

Finding the central node for the office building was not all that difficult. Calling up his data and crack sprites, John tasked them to helping him bust through the firewall of the building they were in. Despite their help in getting him in within seconds, an alert had sounded within the node.

"Shit." John muttered as they followed Cherubael to a set of elevators. People were milling about, utterly confused about what had happened.

"What happened?" Cherubael asked.

"Tripped an alarm." John muttered as he tried to stifle the data noise in the node.

"Lots of confusion. Try using it." Cherubael suggested.

John called back his other two sprites, the machine and courier. The courier he more or less let loose to scramble communications between the white hats and other security people in the node. The machine sprite was tasked in helping them get out while messing with everyone else that might be trying to get at them.

Within the node the two little skulls zipped about. The machine sprite scrambled security cameras that caught John and the others while the courier started by redirecting messages to the wrong people.

"This way." John said, taking the lead as his sprite gave him directions.

"Where're we goin'?" Hoss asked.

"Freight elevator." John said, reading an ARO map of the floor plan his machine sprite had found for him.

The freight elevator was waiting for them, the doors opening silently when they got there.

Within the node users were scrambling. John managed to make sure their elevator trip down was nonstop.

"If we're sneaky my spirit can help." Mina said.

"Glad that wolf can be of help." Cherubael said.

"It's an air elemental." Mina corrected sourly.

John tried sending a chat request to Mina. This time she accepted.

"_You feeling alright?_" he silently asked Mina.

"_I lost a shoe back there, in the metaplane._" Mina grumbled.

Looking down John did notice she was missing one shoe and her bare foot had some mud on it.

"What's wrong with Hunter?" John asked.

"I don't feel so good." Hunter said, sounding like someone who had drank too much booze.

"Her implants might've messed her mind up on the return." Cherubael said, "I think she'll be okay. Just needs a few minutes."

Cherubael must have been right. By the time they reached the ground floor Hunter was able to stand, more or less, on her own. Cherubael still took the lead as they carefully worked their way out the back of the building. With all of the attention focused elsewhere they were able to make their way unnoticed to the other building that housed the Tower Of Babel nightclub.

The nightclub itself was almost devoid of life when they got back. Duct tape and garbage bags covered the broken and cracked windows to keep the still falling rain out.

Aaron Drey and Dean were both still there. Part of the floor had been made into some kind of magic circle of sorts, with candles, olives, coasters, and dragon shaped swizzle sticks among the decorations.

Dean had unrolled a soft keyboard and was playing synth blues to pass the time when they got there.

"Ah, good, you're back!" Aaron said, greeting them as John trudged in through the door.

"Not quite what we expected." Cherubael said as Hoss placed the skull on the floor and clear of the circle.

"What happened? Where's Yuichotol?" Aaron asked as John climbed up onto a barstool to sit.

"This's what's left of what she left behind." Hunter said. "Some frog spirit destroyed the rest."

"I think it's the reason the alchera appeared in the first place." Cherubael added, "It closed on us as soon as the spirit was defeated."

"If it closed, how'd you manage to get out?" Dean asked.

"Had help from a friendlier spirit named Kokopelli." Cherubael said. "He gated us or something."

"And this was Yuichotol?" Aaron asked.

"From what we found, yes." Hunter said.

"Well, this won't quite do." Aaron said.

John looked to the chubby elf, thinking that he was saying they fucked up somehow. But then he noticed that Aaron was looking at his circle instead.

Aaron scooped up most of the materials and redistributed them around the circle. The olives were tossed for pickled eggs provided by the barkeeper. With Hoss's help they positioned the massive skull in the center.

Once the skull was in place Aaron gave each of them a credstick. John slotted it and saw that there was the agreed upon ten thousand nuyen in it. He moved the funds and pocketed the chip.

"That it?" Cherubael asked.

"I guess." John said.

"Can we stay to watch?" Mina asked.

John nodded. He figured letting her do what she wanted here might help her feel better, or forget about, shooting the ganger in the head.

"I'm kinda curious about this, too." Hunter said.

Everyone ended up staying.

Half watching as Aaron began the ritual, John started searching through the matrix for any blogs or MeFeeds that might have pegged them. After about an hour's worth of searching and finding nothing substantial he quit.

The ritual itself looked rather dull. Some muttering, some gesturing, John felt like he did when he would spend six hours probing a node to break in through.

About another hour later things seemed to get interesting. Candles flared up, the pickled eggs smoked, and the dragon-shaped swizzle sticks and some other things melted into the coasters. The skull glowed brightly once, and then disappeared.

Aaron gave his thanks, and then they all left.

Getting out of the Hub was not too difficult, and a few hours later they were back at Little D's to collect his Katana-11, along with a stop along the way at a vendingwear machine so Mina could get some shoes. The rain had long since let up now and it was a dry ride back home.


	19. Run 19 : By Any Means Necessary

Run 19 : By Any Means Necessary (based on the mission written by Stephen McQuillan; posted 2013/06/13)

Mina had been acting weird all day after their transdimensional trip. She had said nothing after Aaron Drey's ritual, and their first night back she had locked herself in her room alone. The following day, while she had locked herself in her room, John made a few calls for ammo and stuff, then spent the next twelve hours recompiling his data and crack sprites.

Later that day she came back out. John first thought it was just to raid the fridge for food, which turned out to be completely wrong. She had been crying, and all she wanted John to do was hold and comfort her. He did not ask, but figured that Mina was still upset about and dealing with the fact that she had blown a man's brains out with his Warhawk.

Things had gotten a little weird. At least that's how it felt at first. After night of being treated like a life sized teddy bear again John thought everything was almost back to normal. Regardless if she had gotten over the shooting, things had changed between the two of them.

They got a message from Dean the next afternoon, with a request from Aaron Drey for a meet at the Tower Of Babel. It turned out that he wanted to express some extra gratitude for their trip, and gave them each a small replica of Yuichotol's skull.

After the trip into the Hub, Mina had managed to talk John into taking her on a trip through the city for a complete makeover. Not only was this new clothes, boots, and a new leather jacket, everything black, but also a change of hairstyle that left her hair black and now well past her shoulders in length. Her stylist said it was some special shampoo like stuff that bonded to hair strands at the ends to make them longer.

When all was said and done, Mina looked like she was about ready to join a street gang.

But she was not the only one to get a makeover. John had taken the opportunity, more from boredom and needing a haircut, to get his hair done a little too. He was less drastic in getting his hair styled, having a pair of blue streaks running from his temples added to his hair. What was great was the female ork tending to him completely accepted the free styling parents and biopigments story about his unusually blue eyes.

Something else John was having to get used to now was being able to look Mina straight in the eye when she wore her new boots. The platform wedge heels added ten centimeters to her height. Funny thing was that she had no difficulty walking in them right away despite having worn almost nothing but sneakers for as long as he had known her.

Saturday was the day John had been waiting for most. Most important to him were the new cameras for his Predators with a mess of optical features that would help in spotting and targeting in adverse conditions. All compliments of Merlin.

But that was not all. In addition to the cameras was another Renraku Yokujin drone that was similar to Laserbeak but equipped with a set of pincers instead of a mini-laser cutter. Along with the minidrone were bits and pieces of camera bits for John to add to both of the tiny drones.

Later that day was to pick up a hundred rounds of ammo for his Warhawk and holdouts from Lady Jade. She also arranged for the machineguns John had asked for, and ammo for both, to be dropped off. They were in a crate by the front door when they got home, which included two boxes of six grenades, one high-explosive and the other flash-bang. Inside was an apology note from Lady Jade's supplier.

With some help from an earth spirit of Mina's, John was able to get the new machineguns mounted on Tracks and Hound. Already he had sent a message to Merlin for a pair of cameras like what his other drones had.

Saturday night came, and after a shower they opted to go out for some fun at an arcade for games and more. Once it was too late for them to be out without a chaperone, they headed home. Overall Mina's mood seemed to lighten some more, though she had shied away from any of the virtual shooting games that involved shooting realistic people.

Christians still spoke of Sunday as the day of rest. For John and Mina, rest was the last thing on their minds. From late in the morning to early evening was spent at a water park, with lunch and dinner bought and eaten there as well. From there it was straight to another arcade for more games, until they got kicked out because the business was closing.

It was almost technically Monday morning by the time they fell asleep. They had spent the afternoon and evening watching in AR a trideo recording of a concert by a group called Speed Coma, followed by another group called Astral Lightning, then Shield Wall, and finally a classic concert by Mercurial.

It was way too early in the morning for John's commlink to be ringing incessantly.

"Yes!" John yelled sharply right after accepting the call. The commlink was on the floor beside them, its camera pointing straight up at the ceiling so the caller could not see them. Then John realized it was quite dark in their room and whoever was calling might not be able to see anything anyway.

"Well nice to finally get you." came back a familiar voice.

Mina groaned.

"Catch you at a bad time, kid?" the caller asked.

John checked the time before answering. "We were sleeping." he said. It was almost one in the morning.

"We? Well, doesn't matter. It's Griff, and we're in a bit of a bind. Can ya meet up with us near the Warrens? There's a place just half a kilometer north on Airport Boulevard on the corner of Alameda."

John had to force himself to think. Feeling Mina's hand on his chest was not helping him focus when he remembered a few things about the Warrens.

"Alameda's the border." John said.

"Parkway." Griff added, "There's another Alameda, Alameda Place. That's north of the Warrens. Look, kid, you'll get paid for helping us. We need a hacker and you're the best we could track down."

"Thanks." John said sourly.

"Hey, I didn't mean it that way." Griff apologized, "Just we need someone good and we need him fast. Got passed on to you by a cat-girl named Tabby. We'll make it worth your while."

"Do we have ta say yes now?" Mina asked.

"Whoa, what? Who's that?" Griff asked.

"My partner." John replied, running a hand up and down Mina's back.

"Oh yeah, right, right. Wynter did say something about you working with another. Both of ya come, I'm sure we could use the help. We'll talk about the details when you get here."

And with that the call was over.

"Fuck him." Mina said.

"Not my type. Or yours." John replied with a slight smile. He thought up a quick text for Tabby, asking about Griff, and with a thought sent it off.

A few minutes later his commlink chimed with a new text message. The message said that Griff had called her about needing a hacker, and that she had forwarded the call without giving the ork his commcode.

"Well, he wasn't lyin'." John said. "Tabby just said so."

Mina crawled up over John, propping herself on his chest to look down at him. She certainly was still cute, red or black hair, though now her hair was just a little annoying as it cascaded down into his face. She brushed her hair aside before leaning down to give him a kiss.

Well, kiss might not have been quite the right word. It was more like making out than just a touch of the lips. But just before John was about to try to say something she pulled back.

"Just to go talk?" Mina asked.

John felt much more awake now, and it certainly was not just because of the kiss. "That's what he said. Like we'd talk terms on how much he'll pay us."

"Alright then." Mina said, sitting upright over John before she got off of him.

They got dressed and geared up like it was any other meeting with a Mr. or Mrs. Johnson. Mina even packed her Ares Redline while John woke up Ravage. Even being close to the Warrens, Knight Errant or Lone Star were not too likely to be around or bother them.

And since it was plenty dark out it was unlikely anyone would be up to see them to report them to the cops anyway.

John drove south to Alameda Avenue, the road that marked the northern boundary of the Aurora Warrens, all the way from the CAS/UCAS boarder on I-225 at the western side, and east until it turned south to intersect Mississippi Avenue. The Warrens really ran further east than that, but you had to be further south, and it really did not matter now.

Along the way John warned Mina about H.M., a work partner of Griff's, and his four camera eyes and four arms.

Once they reached Airport Boulevard, John turned north. Not even half a kilometer and John could feel the signal of H.M.'s recon drone flying above. It was not too difficult to trace it back to the gray van the freakish, four armed cyborg man drove.

Parking his black Katana-11 next to H.M.'s van, John set Ravage to guard it.

Griff opened the side door for them before John even had to knock. He and Mina climbed in quickly, and Griff closed the door right behind them.

"Glad you could make it." the scrawny ork said.

Looking around John saw H.M. in the driver's seat. No real surprise there. The changeling related better to machines than people, and was quite protective of them.

Wynter was sitting in the front passenger seat. She said nothing, nor even indicated she knew John was there.

"We're in a fix, and you call a bunch of kids?" asked a strange voice. Turning to look at him, John saw a red haired man wearing goggles and a full on steampunk outfit. He even had a clockwork dragon with copper colored scales perched on his shoulder. He looked like he had seen better days, his face bruised and his clothing torn up a bit like he had been on the receiving end of a barroom brawl.

"We need a hacker now, and the boy's it." Griff said.

"So you're asking a boy to hack a fortress?" the red haired man asked. "Shoulda called someone who ain't breakin' curfew."

"Well, if someone hadn't managed to get themselves fucked up trying to call a spirit beyond his power, maybe we wouldn't be here in the first place!" Griff barked back.

The red haired man looked like he was about to say something back, but instead winced in pain and quickly put his hand to his side.

"Doesn't she know healing magic?" Mina asked.

"She does." Griff said, "She barely managed to keep herself awake long enough to keep Pyrrhos alive."

"_She is passed out, and I don't think she's in all that good of shape either._" Mina silently said.

"Alright, I don't wanna know." John said. "So, what're you needing me to do?"

"Hack a brothel." H.M. grumbled.

"Hack a what?" John asked.

"Brothel." Griff answered.

"You know, a place where people go to fuck." Pyrrhos added.

John scowled at Pyrrhos. "I know what a brothel is." he said darkly.

Griff continued, "Job's to take a Triad brothel and wreck things up so the Vory can take it over. It's in their turf in the Warrens, anyway."

"Yeah, and I remember Wynter saying he," John said, pointing to H.M., "ain't a hacker."

"Well, he's been tryin'." Griff said, "And we think he bit off way more than he could chew with this one."

"Gotta be at least military grade software." H.M. muttered. It was sort of hard to tell, but John guessed H.M. was frowning.

"How much time we got?" John asked.

"Sooner the better." Griff told him.

"Just getting in for a back door or passcode or something?" John asked.

"Actually, if you could fuck with their fire sprinklers and security." Griff said.

"_You're considering this?_" Mina asked.

"_Not like I'm gonna do it for free._" John told her.

"_The hell you would! If you don't make 'im pay for it I will!_"

"What's going on?" Pyrrhos asked.

"I'd say the kids're talkin'." Griff said, sounding quite unsure of himself.

"Yeah, we're talkin' to each other." John snidely said aloud.

"Girl's got you by the balls?" Pyrrhos asked.

"Wanna keep yours?" John asked back, his hand going for his Warhawk.

"Will you cool off, Pyrrhos?" Griff asked, putting his hands up between John and the redhead.

"_Jackass._" Mina silently muttered.

"_Tabby's so gonna owe me another one._" John told her. "Fine. Five thousand." he said aloud.

"Whoa. That a bit steep?" Pyrrhos asked.

"Once we're done with the place." Griff added.

"_Just five thousand?_" Mina asked. "_You heard him. Military software?_"

"And you make sure to tell Tabby she owes me another favor, too." John added.

"Another?" Griff asked.

John glanced to Mina. She nodded, but did not look too happy. He was glad she was okay with this because he was going to accept anyway. He had no idea how much Griff and the others were getting paid for this themselves, but five thousand nuyen off that must have been enough for them to accept.

"Alright, deal." Griff said.

John and Griff shook hands.

"Here's the data on the brothel." Griff said, plugging at his commlink. John soon got a data transfer request, and accepted it, routing the data to the commlink in his goggles.

"Place's called the Jade Crane." Griff said.

"Maybe we oughta buy the kids a room first." Pyrrhos said with a chuckle. "Let 'em get their cherries popped first!" He almost started laughing, but the noise soon turned to coughing. It did not sound healthy.

"_Just what's wrong with him?_" John silently asked.

After a few seconds, Mina silently said, "_Looks like he got shot, twice._"

"_Didn't mean that._"

"Hey, they're kids." Griff said.

"You ready now?" John asked. He was quite ready to be done with this.

"You get the security and fire sprinklers off, and H.M.'ll take care of the rest." Griff said.

John turned around and opened the door. "Okay, you lead and we'll follow you there."

"What, now?" Griff asked.

"Yes, now." Mina replied sharply as John hopped out.

"What's got her panties in a twist?" they heard Pyrrhos ask as the van's door closed behind them.

They followed H.M. straight south and deep into the Warrens. He was careful about their path, and only once did John see any gangs. They were a few bikers from the Aurora Angels, and apparently knew John already as they scooted off away. John smiled at the thought of their second in command, a technomancer named Tenebrous, and her reaction to finding the nasty data bombs that helped protect much of his gear from being hacked.

The Jade Crane was not all that difficult to find once they got close. AR icons started showing up in the virtual distance when they were about a hundred meters away. When they got closer and saw the four story building they also saw numerous holograms that were projected onto the sidewalk. Each hologram advertised a different prostitute or service that the Jade Crane offered.

H.M. parked his van out of site of the brothel, and John parked right close by.

Griff opened the door. "You wanna be comfortable while you do this?" he asked.

"Just tell H.M. to be ready." John said as he relaxed his body.

"You're not gonna spend hours sitting on that, are you?"

John closed his eyes, trying to settle his mind before diving his mind into virtual reality. "I ought to be inside in seconds."

Before Griff could voice his protests John was in the digital world.

Finding the brothel's nodes was not too difficult at all. He analyzed each of the three he figured were within the Jade Crane, mostly based on how strong the signals were. He then focused his attention on the one that had the hardest feeling firewall. It almost felt like the ski lodges at WinterLand, so John braced himself for a major headache.

Hopefully five thousand would be enough.

Bolstering his forms, and calling on two sprites for additional aid, John went straight to forcing his way through the node's firewall. His left hand was like the blade of a jackhammer, and with a hardened right fist he pounded with all of his might. Getting through felt weirder than normal, not like busting through a glass window but more like he was trying to push himself through clay.

The interior looked almost as Chinese as John expected it. The architecture was more modern styled with ancient elements, and it looked more like he had just walked into a bank than a security node. Was this the node H.M. had tried to hack into?

Walking over to an icon that looked like a cash tray, John placed his hand on it to draw up its information.

"_Ask Griff_ _if H.M. tried hacking the toughest node._" John silently sent to Mina.

Several seconds later, while John analyzed the data he was getting, Mina said, "_Yeah. Apparently didn't get in before they cut him off._"

"_Tell them he tried to hack their finances._" John muttered as he looked around the node. He was already poking the other two nodes to hack into.

"_Great! See if you can snag some cash from 'em while you're there!_"

Behind his virtual mask, John grinned. "_Got any credsticks on ya?_" Having picked the harder of the other two he began forcing his way through its firewall.

"_Couple of silvers._" After a second or two she added, "_Found a black one in one of your pockets._"

"_Stick the black one in my goggles!_" John said, unable to contain his excitement when he saw the account's bottom line. At the same time he was already through and into the next node.

"_It's in._"

John could feel his real heart racing as he funneled out over two hundred and thirty thousand nuyen, sending it all to the credstick that held his share of a million nuyen bounty from months ago. He left behind less than a thousand in the account. Once the funds were moved he disconnected from this node.

Then there was the other node John had broken into. The sculpting inside this was also distinctly Chinese in style, though much more modern looking. There were numerous icons floating about, each showing the view from a strategically placed camera.

"_Shit, there's a ton of cameras all over the place._" John told Mina, "_And not just the outside, either._"

Several icons, John now noticed, were hidden in bedrooms. That is if you could call them bedrooms. Some looked like what John expected a brothel bedroom to look like. Others were… weirder.

On top of that some were in use. John really had no other word to describe watching a prostitute at her job with her john. It also was not just security as the occupied prostitutes were being recorded.

"_What do you mean?_" Mina asked.

"_Uh… Just…_" He was having a hard time trying to tell Mina he was watching two people have sex.

"_Well, Griff's bitching about you needing to hurry up._" prodded Mina. "_Says to tell you H.M.'s ready with the firebombs._"

"_Alright then._" John mentally grumbled.

Placing a virtual hand on an icon, John tapped into the security locks of the Jade Crane. With a thought he ordered all of them open.

Then John went to work on the cameras. Subtlety was put aside for speed, and he called upon his data sprite to help him. Together they started glitching out or editing the various video feeds.

"_Go._" John silently sent to Mina.

His work was obviously noticed. John could not understand a word being said, but there were two security hackers logged in who were now trying to figure out what was going on. He could see their icons working furiously to try and counteract what he and his sprite were doing.

One of them apparently found the data sprite, but it was too late now. Fire alarms started going off from inside the brothel. John had an 'oh shit' moment just as he realized the fire suppression system was still online. He barely caught it in time to keep it from activating.

Through the other security cameras John could see the some of the prostitutes and their clients hurrying to get dressed. Others looked like they were more concerned for their lives, grabbing only enough for a little bit of decency before fleeing.

Then he saw it in one of the security cameras. A small fire was now burning behind the bar. Maybe a gas heater caught fire?

Then the whole rack of liquor bottles collapsed, glass bottles shattering. The next instant there was a whoosh of flame, the booze spreading the flames more. Thousands of nuyen worth of good quality liquor lost as they spread the flames wider.

When things started to feel a little funny in the node, John took it as his cue to log off. He called off his data sprite at the same time, letting it loose back into the resonance where it came from.

"… the hell happened?" John heard Griff yell when his senses returned to the real world.

"Fuck if I know." John said, starting up the engine of his Katana-11. "Bet H.M. wants to get his drones back so we can get the fuck outta here!"

"They never got in!" Griff yelled.

"Never mind that! Let's go!" cried Mina. She sounded very anxious to leave.

"Right. Follow us and we'll see to getting you your money." Griff said, closing the van door.

"_Should we?_" Mina asked.

"_I guess._" John replied.

H.M. was quick to get onto Quincy Avenue and hightailed it east. John had no trouble at all following them.

After going east for a while, H.M. turned north. After a brisk drive, several turns, they finally stopped at an abandoned office park deep in the Front's territory of the Warrens.

At least they were not in a static zone. John pulled up a few AROs to watch the news and such. He hoped he might find something about the Jade Crane. A four story building on fire, even if was in the Warrens, was not exactly something to be ignored.

"Alright, what the fuck happened?" Griff demanded to know as he jumped out of the van's side door. The sound of his voice and everything made John put his hand on the grip of his Warhawk.

"C… Cypher was already in and did his thing, and you were taking too long." Mina said, sounding a little nervous now, "So I called a little flame spirit to help."

"What'd you tell it to do?" groaned Wynter. Looked like she had woken up somewhere along the way to the park.

"Find some outta the way place with flammable stuff and set it on fire. Make some accidents to help the place burn." Mina said.

"Well, I saw a wall of booze fall on a flame." John said. With his hands he mimicked a mushroom cloud explosion.

Griff groaned.

"Petrov calls us for a grease job, and two twerps do better than we did." chuckled Pyrrhos. He then coughed briefly. It almost sounded like he was going to hack up a lung.

"So that spirit'll be traced to her?" Wynter asked. "Yeah, that Russian won't pay us now." John was not sure if she was trying to be funny or not.

"No, it won't trace to me." Mina said. "It'll trace to him. I forged his aura." She pointed at Pyrrhos.

John smiled. Partially from knowing that she had somehow managed to cover her own trail, but also from finding a news feed from an aerial drone. The visual data feed had an extra logo for one of the Denver news agencies, though it looked like the drone was flying on the CAS side of the border. The zoom lens was maxed out on a nearly invisible smoke plume that John figured was coming from the Jade Crane. It did not look like there was a lowlight filter so the best light was coming from a few flames from the building itself.

"Doesn't matter now." he said, "Got a news ARO, and I think it's burning pretty good."

"Shit." Griff muttered.

"And the people?" Mina asked.

"Don't know. It's a drone on the other side." John told her.

"And the Crane?" Pyrrhos asked.

John tapped the ARO with a finger, tagging it as a public icon. He then copied it and flipped the copy over to the red haired man.

"Building's gotta be flaming pretty good. Shit." Pyrrhos cussed.

"You were gonna firebomb the place, and you wanted Cypher to knock out the sprinklers. So what's the problem?" Mina asked.

"We're out over seven grand if the Vory can't take the place over." Pyrrhos told them.

John looked over his shoulder to look at Mina. Her expression was a mix of anger and resentment, with maybe a touch of fury. He wondered how the other guys thought their firebombs would have been less effective. H really did not care now anyway, one way or another.

"_Fuck 'em?_" he silently asked.

Mina gave a slight nod.

John looked back to the others.

"Fuck the Vory." John and Mina said together.

"Well, they gotta pay us before we can pay you." Griff told them.

John sighed.

"I'll talk to Petrov. Maybe we can talk him into paying the kids for their work." Wynter said.

Mina groaned. John was not feeling too good about it either.

"What's your problem with the Vory?"Griff asked.

"_You really wanna push it for just five thousand?_" John silently asked Mina. "_I mean, I took over two hundred thousand out of their account._"

"_Holy shit!_"

"You okay?" Griff asked.

"What?" Mina asked back.

"The Vory?"

"Well, they tried killing her, for one." John said.

"Yeah, a Vory bitch shot me. Here." Mina angrily said. John glanced back to see Mina patting herself where the shoulders and spine crossed.

"You were shot?" Griff asked.

"Some princess… Irene… Ira…" John said.

"Irina Klavikova?" Pyrrhos asked.

"That's the bitch." John growled.

"When'd this happen?"

"'Bout mid June. Why?"

"Heard something about a Vory princess getting an ear fixed last month. Really short blond hair, built like a sexy army girl, and major psychotic sex issues. Word was she almost got capped in the head."

John clenched his jaw when he felt Mina's fingers dig into his side.

"Yeah, sounds like that's Irina. Fuck." John grimaced.

"What's wrong with that?" Griff asked.

"I missed." John told him, using his left hand to mimic a gun, aiming and shooting his finger at Griff.

"I think it's all set." Wynter said. "We meet Petrov at Environmental Park in about four hours. Sounded like he was gonna pay all of us, kids included."

"There ya go." Griff said, "Looks like you'll each get five grand. And after we get paid I'll also tell Tabby about your good work."

"Great." John muttered.

"We do your job and you get paid?" Mina asked. "_Maybe you oughta hack 'em for the money._"

"Doin' the Crane wasn't the only part of the job." Griff said. "Had a few… 'clients' to take care of, too."

John did not like the sound of this.

"_Do they mean kill?_" Mina asked.

"_Probably. Griff said Tabby forwarded him to us, maybe she can help?_"

Mina did not look happy.

"Fine. We'll wait 'n go with ya." John said aloud. Silently he was pulling up Tabby's commcode to give her a call. He ended up having to leave a message for her to call him back.

Since it was going to be a while, John and Mina climbed off of his motorcycle to stretch out on the more comfortable grass. The others talked more amongst themselves.

It was about five to ten minutes later when Tabby returned John's call.

"Hey kiddo, got your message. What's up?" She sounded a little tired.

"_Remember a guy named Griff needing a hacker?_" John asked.

"Yeah. Hope you don't mine me passing him to you."

"_Not really. Feel like I gotta get some info on this guy they're working for._" John said, "_Some Vory guy named Petrov?_"

Tabby was silent for a little bit before saying, "Gotta be Mikael Petrov. Don't know any others. He's a cold and calculating kind of guy. Not one you wanna get on the wrong end. He knows what he wants and he takes it."

"_He's gonna be pissed. I think he wanted the something-Crane._" Mina said.

"You talking about the Jade Crane? That brothel that's on fire in the Warrens?" Tabby asked.

"_Yeah, that one._" John said, "_Griff needed a hacker to break into their node to disable stuff._"

"Dang. Wish I'd known that. Sorry. It's just not a place I'd send kids to." Tabby told them.

"_Not like we had to go in or anything._" John replied, "_And you owe me for this. I don't think Griff's too happy about our work. But anything else 'bout this Petrov guy?_"

"Make it two. And don't worry about what he tells me. I know you better than that." amended Tabby.

"Anyway, Petrov's Vory, intimidating, and though he says he hates it he uses violence like a surgeon does a scalpel." Tabby told them. "And the Vory had some trouble with the gangs a while back."

"_Which gangs?_" John asked.

"Not sure. Would have to ask around about that."

"_I think we can do that, thanks._"

"_Yeah, thanks._" Mina added.

"Just be careful about everything you do dealing with Mikael Petrov." Tabby told them just before she hung up.

"_Know anyone else we can talk to?_" Mina asked.

"_I don't know._" John replied, "_Like, what about?_"

Mina sighed. "_Over three hours to wait?_" she asked. John felt her scooting closer, resting her head on his outstretched arm as they both looked up at the sky.

They were at the park for maybe another half hour before deciding to go somewhere for food. This ended up being a Stuffer Shack in the Front's territory of the Warrens. The others seemed a bit nervous about this, acting more guarded than fearful as they ate their soy based foods in the store's parking lot. Even Ravage got its own version of food as John hacked a public utility outlet for the drone to plug into.

When it came time they departed for Environmental Park. They traveled through the Warrens for as long as they could. John felt a little nervous about getting spotted by the cops outside of the Warrens. It was getting close to sunrise and the wageslaves would soon be getting up to go to work.

Oddly enough, the park was only a few kilometers east of where John and Mina lived. John hoped that the others were not driving the same direction on their way from the park.

Environmental Park did not seem to deserve the name, John felt. It was less a park and more an open field. Maybe it was an okay idea, being able to see a good distance, with half a square kilometer of open territory if one were towards the middle. Something about this also bugged John.

John and Ravage followed behind H.M.'s van as they drove along the boundary of the park. Apparently their meeting place was just inside the park, with a turnoff just ahead of them.

When there was maybe two dozen meters to the turn off, Ravage suddenly bolted ahead of John. The drone got in the way and forced John to skid to a stop.

"What's wrong?" asked Mina.

Mentally John tried getting a report or something from the military drone. It in turn opened an ARO map of the immediate area.

Before John could get a good look at the map he felt something sting him on the right side of his chest. Faster than he could cry ouch he and Mina were lying on their sides on the road. He could not cry out because he now had a hard time breathing in.

"Cypher!" Mina yelled over the sound of machinegun fire from Ravage.

Looking at his chest John saw he had been shot. There was no other explanation of the oozing blood from the new hole in his leather jacket.

Then Mina cried out.

Fighting the pain and trying to keep low, John rolled over to look at her. She was flat, face down on the road and bleeding profusely from her left arm. At least she was alive, but crying. This was drowned out briefly by another burst of machinegun fire from Ravage.

"Astorath…" he heard Mina whimper.

A sudden explosion of heat made John look up. Standing before them was a large fire elemental. It looked different than before, standing almost as tall as a troll. It looked more armored, if John could call it armor, rather than a roaring fire like the last times he had seen Mina conjure a fire elemental. It was like raw red and orange flames were contained within an invisible jar and ready to explode, its body smooth and almost solid looking. If it were not for the intense heat John might have tried reaching out to touch its foot to feel how smooth it was.

Ravage seemed to process this sudden new entity. As the elemental did not look like it was acting in a hostile way it reportedly deemed it a neutral party.

The elemental turned away from them when John heard more gunfire. He was barely fast enough to tell Ravage that the elemental was friendly, but the drone had its own priorities.

Several bullets pinged the roadway where they were. Right away John got a damage report from Ravage, its front right leg suffering severe damage. It was not enough as the drone turned and returned fire with its own machinegun. John shivered as the Stoner-Ares M107 sang, unleashing a storm of bullets towards whoever had shot at them.

The next thing John knew he was looking up at a blue-white sky. His head was pounding like an obese troll was stomping on it and he felt like he had slept in a freezer. His chest did not feel any better, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Something tugged at it, and he groaned.

"You're awake now. Keep still. This'll probably hurt a lot." a woman's voice told him.

There was no pain, though he could feel more tugging at his arm. Slowly he turned his head to look, but hands were in the way. One looked natural and the other was cybernetic.

Following the hands up the arm, John saw Hunter kneeling beside him.

"How…" John groaned, but he never finished the question.

Prying his eyes open again, John found himself in a strange place. After a turn and hitting a bump in the road he realized it was the backseat of a car.

Groggily looking over John saw Mina sitting next to him. A blanket had been wrapped over her shoulders, but he could see a blood stain soaking through.

"How're the kids?" asked a woman.

"Let me see." he heard Hunter say.

Hunter was in the front passenger seat. Their eyes met.

"Cypher's awake again. Looks a little green." Hunter said.

"I hope he's not going to throw up." the other woman said.

John wanted to say something. It felt like lead weights were hooked to his eyelids as they slowly closed. He thought Hunter said something, but could not make it out.

It was a dimly lit room when John opened his eyes again. This time he was lying in a comfortable bed. His chest still throbbed, and when he went to rub where he had been shot he felt a bandage wrapped around him.

"Awake again, huh?" he heard Hunter say.

John tried to sit up, and immediately regretted the effort. As soon as he was upright he started falling over sideways. Thankfully Hunter was right there to catch him before he fell out of bed.

"Take it easy. You're still recovering from getting shot." Hunter told him.

"How long?" John weakly asked. He felt rather dizzy and light headed, and the throbbing in his chest was a little worse now.

"Less than a day. It's already night again." Hunter told him as she helped him lie back down. She pulled the blankets back up over his chest but left his bandages uncovered. Now he realized that all he had to cover himself were those blankets.

"Where… are we?" John asked as he watched her. She did not seem concerned at all that he was naked under just two bed sheets.

"My place. It's the same room you had the last time we were here." Hunter told him as she checked the bandage on his chest. She had a high cut, loose top of blue fabric on, and as she knelt over to check he could see straight down her shirt. She was not wearing a bra.

"And Mi… Uh, Firefly?"

"She's here, too. She's fine."

Either unconcerned or not noticing that John had a great view of her cleavage, Hunter continued. "You got it worse than she did. She just got grazed. Few stitches for her and she was fine."

"Can I see her?" he asked, discretely trying to fix himself under the blankets.

"You really should rest." Hunter said. His eyes darted up to meet hers as she stood.

"Fuck sleep." John said more strongly as he tried to sit up again. He gritted his teeth as fresh pain exploded in his chest and shot through his right shoulder and arm. "If… Firefly's up I wanna see her."

"Rei's really gonna bitch about this, but alright." Hunter sighed. "But you take it super easy and let me get everything for you. That's the condition. Else I'm haulin' your ass back to bed."

"Fine." John said.

Hunter was more amazing than John had first realized. She took a towel from the adjoining bathroom and tied it into a sling for John's arm. She said it would help ease the pain if the muscles did not have to work at holding his arm.

Then there was getting dressed. Well, sort of. All John got to wear was a white bathrobe that was a little large for him. He did not know whether to be more embarrassed by being naked in front of her, or that she did not seem to notice his still raging erection as she securely tied the belt of his bathrobe. At least the robe was not so long that he would be tripping on it.

Once set, and with his arm securely in the sling, Hunter walked with John out to the hallway. He had to lean heavily against her with an arm around her waist. He had no idea how many times he might have fallen over if he had walked the hallway alone.

The room they walked to was like a living room. There were several luxurious looking chairs and couches set in a semicircle in the middle of the room, and some real artwork in the form of paintings and sculptures decorating the walls. The far wall had a beautifully large picture window that overlooked a balcony and a park beyond. It was dark out, and their own reflections made it a little hard to see outside. Above for part of the roof was a skylight, angled with the rest of the roof.

"Glad you're back." a woman said as they entered the room. She had long, silvery white hair that was straight and quite long. She looked like she was dressed comfortably in a white shirt and skirt. The only color to her were her light blue eyes. She held a cream colored drink cup in both hands. The strangest thing was that she did not turn her head to look at them as they entered.

"And with company." Hunter added.

"Hope he's not straining himself too much." the woman said just before she took a sip of her drink.

"Cypher?" Mina asked. She was at one side of a couch, her left arm in a sling similar to John's, and she also wore a similar bathrobe. Her black colored hair was a stark contrast to all of the white in the room.

"Take it easy on him. He's had a really rough day." Hunter said as she helped John to sit on the same couch.

Mina probably was not as easy as Hunter might have liked, scooting over to press herself to his good side. John was careful as he put his good arm around her. He had to admit that it felt great to feel her at his side again.

"Can I get something to drink, please?" John asked.

"Sure. Be right back." Hunter said as she walked out of view.

"I'm Rei Kanzaki." the woman said, introducing herself. "Oh, don't worry about me knowing you're a technomancer, Cypher. I don't really care. Unless you try messing with my things with your abilities, which then I'll set a kami on you."

John nervously looked to Mina. She only shrugged an "I don't know" look. Without her commlink and trodes they could not silently communicate with each other like they did when on a run.

"You don't need to worry so much." Rei said, taking another sip of her drink. "I might be blind but I'm not that blind. I'm a magician and it's my job to be able to read auras."

"Oh." John said softly.

"Think you can untangle yourselves long enough?" Hunter asked from behind them. She held more than just one drink bottle, having one for herself as well as for Mina too.

They did not really have to as John was able to shift his drink to his right hand. There was a slight twinge when he lifted the drink bottle to his lips, but it did not feel too bad. Mina had it better off as she could use both of her arms with better ease. The lemon flavored drink tasted nice, too.

"So, just how'd you send that message?" asked Hunter as she sat down in her own chair. "It's been bugging me all day."

"How… what?" John asked back.

"I got a message from you this morning." Hunter told them. "All the message said was 'HELP', in all caps, and had an image of you and Firefly shot. Then your drone there gave me it's coordinates until I got there."

"I don't know…" John said, trying to think of an explanation. He could not remember sending anyone a message for help.

"Well, I'd've checked its logs and such," Hunter said, taking a sip of her own drink, "but I tried to disarm that black hole trap you've got on it. Gave up on that the second time my 'link crashed."

"It's here?" John asked.

"Plugged in down in the garage." Hunter told him.

With a thought John sought out Ravage's node. It took a little bit before he got anything back from it.

"Thought you were a smart kid." remarked Rei.

"Waiting for Ravage to wake up. It was asleep." John told her. Ravage was online now and John was logging into it.

"It was pretty low on power when we got here." Hunter said. "Looked like it went to stand-by mode as soon as I plugged it in."

"Yeah." John said as sought out the drone's recent activity history. There was not much to find, but he found a copy of a text message sent to Hunter's commlink. All it said was 'HELP' and it gave a latitude and longitude location. On top of that it had actually faked being John's commlink when it sent the message.

"Um… I never sent it." John said nervously. Looking at Mina he saw she was also worried. "Ravage did it on its own."

"You told it to protect you two, right?" Hunter asked.

"Yeah." John said softly, his eyes darting away as he tried to think about the drone's operating system. He never gave much thought about the actual programming code of these things. He usually just thought an order to a drone and it happened.

"Maybe it got something from me the last time I saw it?" Hunter asked. "I know it's scanned me a few times before. Could've figured I'd help you."

"Didn't know drones did that." John said, looking back to Hunter.

Hunter said, "Typically they don't." She sounded more concerned than pleased. "It's one of those 'dead man switch' things that have to be done in advance."

"So that gun drone of his took the initiative to save their lives?" Rei asked.

"It's military hardware. Thought it was a little quirky because of that." John said. He could not stifle a yawn.

Mina must have been feeling tired too as she was leaning more heavily on him. His eyes drifted to look her over.

"Sarah, I think it's time to put the kids to bed." Rei said. "We'll have lots more to talk about in the morning."

In a moment of clarity John realized he was tired. He did not notice when Hunter stood, but she had already taken their drinks and was pulling Mina to stand.

Hunter walked between them as she helped them back to their rooms.

"Why's she all 'lord of the manor'?" John asked.

"Because it's technically her home." Hunter said, "She lets me live here. She's really a good person, so don't get too pissy 'bout it."

They stopped at the door to John's room. "Wait here while I get him in bed." Hunter told Mina. Together she and John walked inside.

Mina groaned as she followed them in anyway.

"Hey!" Hunter cried, "It ain't like WinterLand where we shared a room."

John walked ahead of Hunter and sat on the bed. "We've been sleep together at home for months now." he said sleepily as he slipped the sling off. "I feel like a stuffed animal."

Mina giggled as she sat on the bed next to John.

"So what's the difference here?" John asked.

Hunter looked like she was about to give them a speech, even had her mouth open to start. She quickly closed her mouth and just looked at the two of them, shaking her head.

"What's wrong?" Mina asked.

"Was 'bout to give you a 'kids should be kids' kind of speech." Hunter said, kneeling down in front of them. "But you two have had to grow up so fast with this kind of life." She paused, looking at them thoughtfully before saying, "Just don't feel like you've gotta rush into everything in a relationship. Hopefully you kids'll have years to do more stuff together."

John suddenly felt hot. It was like Hunter was giving them the 'sex talk' and just skirting around the subject.

"Don't make me regret this, okay?" Hunter asked as she stood back up to leave. She stopped at the door to say, "We should have some new clothes for you in the morning. Best you wear something less conspicuous while you're staying here."

Hunter closed the door behind her, leaving John and Mina alone and together in the dark.


	20. Run 20 : Career Path

Run 20 : Career Path (based on the mission written by Darci Stratton; posted 2013/06/22)

"Can you hand me that wrench, please?" John asked.

"Ten or twelve?" Sarah asked back.

"Twelve." John said, studying the AR schematic and comparing it to Ravage's busted leg.

With wrench in hand, John wiped the sweat off his forehead before tackling the last bolt that held the drone's leg on. Working in Rei's garage had proven a little interesting. Especially when his black Katana-11 was crammed next to Sarah's electric blue Contrail and Ravage was stashed between her sports car and Rei's sedan.

He had to put all his weight into it to even make it creak. With some more effort he managed to get it loosened some more, and eventually off. The busted Doberman leg clattered to the concrete floor.

"Finally." grunted John as he rocked back to sit on the floor. He rolled his right shoulder, rubbing it firmly with his left hand. The work made him feel extra sore there. He was still thankful that the gunshot had not broken any bones.

"Let's take a break, shall we?" Sarah asked, taking the wrench.

Tired, John looked up at her. Her blond hair was tied back in her usual simple ponytail with a purple scrunchie. She wore a royal purple sports bra and matching shorts, sweat glistening on her bare skin.

"How's it going?" Mina asked from the garage doorway. She was wearing a black and yellow one piece swimsuit with a matching skirt that came partway down her thighs and was just short enough. John thought the getup was cute, cuter if she did not have the skirt on, but made her look a bit younger than she really was. She had two wet washcloths in hand.

With a heavy sigh, John forced himself to his feet. He accepted one of the washcloths and patted it on his bare chest. Even wearing just khaki shorts he felt like he was baking in the heat. The cool water felt good against his skin.

Sarah took the other washcloth and patted it on her neck and chest.

"Got the busted leg off. Just need to get the new one from Merlin and it'll be set." John said.

"Well, why don't we get something to drink?" Sarah suggested.

Mina turned around and went in first, with Sarah right behind her.

Inside was much cooler than the garage, but not so insanely cold like walking from the summer sun into the chill of a supermarket.

Mina hopped onto a barstool while Sarah grabbed the dry towels that were draped over another. She tossed one to John.

"Hey stud, put your shirt back on." Sarah told him.

"Yeah, yeah." John grumbled as he tried himself off. His eyes met Mina's briefly. His chest felt tight just as she looked away, blushing.

"Am I gonna have to get the hose?" Sarah asked. Her tone was quite serious.

"No." Mina said meekly.

"No." John said right away. Now that he was dried off he grabbed his Denver Ghosts t-shirt and pulled it on.

"Good." Sarah said sternly. "Remember, you're both still on probation."

John could not forget. Especially when Sarah kept reminding both of them.

Tuesday had been an easy and lazy kind of day. Both Mina and John both had still been taking it easy throughout the day.

John had spent the morning checking the logs of both his motorcycle and Ravage. Some of the information had turned out rather strange.

Sarah had told him that she received a text message calling for help from John, though he could not remember sending such a message. He found a saved copy of that message in Ravage's memory that the drone itself had sent, but the entire message looked like it was written and sent from John's commlink.

John's motorcycle, Sarah admitted, had been easy enough to fool into following them back to Rei's place. Ravage, on the other hand, had been more difficult. Sarah had told him that she tried faking commands to John, all of which failed. Ravage had records of each attempt, and they were all marked as 'Ignore.' Strangest thing was that in the end she had ended up just talking to the damned drone like it was a vicious dog. Strangely enough this had actually worked!

There was no explanation why the drone behaved this way that John could find. Even after checking everything from the core operating system to the pilot program software. The pilot software was different than that of his other Doberman or Soldat drones, but none of those were ex-military drones either.

The new clothes Sarah mentioned did not show. On top of that she started grumbling about the reliability of someone apparently stupid enough to try crossing a border with a crate of tripchips, illegal Better Than Life programs that were at least as addictive as many drugs. The ZDF had confiscated her friend's vehicle and all of its contents.

There was not a whole lot to do, but considering how John and Mina were feeling there was not a whole lot they really wanted to do. They pretty much commandeered the entertainment room's couch to relax on and spend a very lazy day.

Mina having her trodes and commlink back made a big difference, too. While their bodies could rest and heal they were able to do other things, like virtual games and movies. Sarah had some new clothes for them when they got back to reality that evening.

Wednesday started out about the same. Sarah checked how their gunshot wounds were healing, which was remarkably well considering the favor of a healing spell Rei had given them Monday afternoon.

Rei could not stay for much of the day, having to go in to work for Knight Errant. Sarah also left to try and track down some things she said would help fix their other clothes, as well as to get some new articles they picked out online. Later she sent a message home saying she got called up by a bail bondsman in need of help catching a skipper.

While alone, John and Mina opted to take advantage of Rei's luxurious home. Well, compared to the rather austere office space turned apartment they lived in, Rei was living in the lap of luxury. This included a rather nice room above the garage with an even nicer hot tub, and a great view through a one-way window. The bubbling hot water felt great.

They were long out of the hot tub and dry by the time Sarah got back, and she seemed none the wiser.

The next day Rei had to work again, and Sarah left for whatever she was looking for yesterday to fix their clothes. Again John and Mina were left to their own devices, which really was not anything new.

But this time they opted for something different. When Sarah got back earlier than they had expected, what she was pretty much the shock of a lifetime for the three of them. John and Mina would argue that they had it worse off, with Sarah busting in on them with a loaded handgun aimed at them. Considering what Sarah had heard, and the compromising situation she caught John and Mina in, it was a bit understandable.

John kept his best poker face on whenever he thought about what all he and Mina did before they got caught. He figured that if Sarah knew she would rip his testicles off and force feed them back to him. Remembering the nut crunch she did to Billy a few months back was enough for him to keep quiet.

Sarah had made a deal with them on the promise that she would not tell Rei about their indiscretions. While the two would be staying as guests at Rei's home, at least one of them would be with her or Rei at any given time, with a few exceptions. Both of them would also be on their best behavior. This also meant that John and Mina would not be sharing a bed during the rest of their stay.

Both John and Mina had reluctantly agreed. Partly because Sarah had found out that Mikael Petrov was upset about what happened in Environmental Park that Monday morning, and it turned out that staying at Rei's place was a good hideout. John and Mina both checked out their home once, and were relieved that nothing there was wrong.

John had wanted to know how long their probation was going to last. Considering the look he got from Sarah the first time he was about to ask that, he figured it would be however long she felt was necessary. Hopefully it would not be for the rest of their lives.

They all had a lunch of simple sandwiches, which were made from real food and not soy. John wondered if Mina would agree to upping her share of their rent with him so they could spring for more real food.

During lunch the doorbell rang. John and Mina kept quiet and quite still while Sarah went to greet the person. She soon returned with a fair sized package.

"Okay, which one of you made an order without telling us?" she asked.

"I did." John sighed. It had completely slipped his mind that he had sent a message to Merlin for a Doberman drone leg as soon as he had found out it needed to be replaced. "Called a guy about the part I needed. Bought all sorts of stuff from him."

"And what's in here?" Sarah asked sternly.

Had Sarah been in a better mood John surely would have given one of a few smart answers that had come to mind. When she was in a full on mother/cop mode he figured the truth would be better.

"A replacement leg for Ravage." he said softly.

Sarah said nothing as she sat the box on the kitchen table and opened it. "You could've at least warned me about this." she said. The first thing she pulled out was a folded up robotic leg wrapped in bubble wrap.

"And there's another box in here, labeled for Firefly." Sarah said, setting the drone leg down and pulling out a much smaller box.

John took the drone leg and looked it over. It almost looked like the one he had struggled to remove from Ravage, only better because it looked factory new.

"Girl, I think you've got some explaining to do." Sarah said sternly. She had opened Firefly's package and pulled out its contents.

It looked like a necklace. It had a single band of wide black fabric, maybe satin, with a clasp of some kind of black metal that almost blended in perfectly with the fabric in color and apparent texture. At about the center was a pendant of the same kind of black metal, but it was the design that caught his eye.

Set into the black metal was a replica of his winged sword signature icon set in silver.

"Uh… Um…" Mina went. She looked like she had a whole bunch of pent up feelings now, and it was only a matter of which one would burst.

Sarah looked like a mix of sadness, frustration, and something else John could not figure out. He really hoped it was not anger.

"You know you could get mistaken for John wearing this?" Sarah asked.

"I… I thought I'd be… supportive…" Mina stammered like she was trying to figure out what to say. "And I ordered it two weeks ago."

"It's not like it's that original." John added. "Saw it in a game. Whole army had that winged sword look on their armor, and I thought it looked neat. And since no one else used it as a sig online…"

"So you thought you'd make it your own?" Sarah asked him.

"Well… Yeah. Kinda went with the name." John told her.

Sarah sighed again. "Wouldn't be so bad if you two weren't in trouble for yesterday."

Reluctantly she handed the necklace to Mina.

"Could you give it to him, please?" Mina asked meekly. When Sarah did not immediately do so, Mina added, "I want him to help put it on me."

"Fine." Sarah sighed, handing John the necklace.

John's heart thundered in his chest as he took the necklace. Getting up from his chair, John carefully walked around to stand behind Mina. With one hand Mina pulled her black hair aside to expose her neck.

With great care John slipped his hands around her neck, stringing the necklace around so the pendant was facing forward. He was surprised when he tried to hook the clasp that it was too tight.

"Hang on, I need to fix this." John said.

"What's wrong?" Sarah asked.

"It's too tight." Mina told them, holding her necklace so John could adjust the length of the band. "It's a choker, but it'll choke me."

"It's supposed to be tight?" John asked.

"Not this tight." Mina gagged.

Based on what Mina told him John did not loosen the necklace as much has he had been going to at first. He left just enough slack so it could slip a little.

Once the choker was set, and the clasp locked, John slid his hands to her shoulders. It felt nice to touch her skin again.

"So, just how much did you pay for that bauble?" Sarah asked.

Mina lowered her head and mumbled something John could not understand.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Sarah asked.

"A hundred and ninety-five thousand nuyen." Mina said softly.

John felt faint. His mind reeled at trying to figure out how such a little thing could be so expensive.

"I hope you've got a good reason for spending that much." Sarah said sternly. "Even if that cameo were solid silver it still wouldn't be worth that much."

"It… It's not just a choker." Mina said. "It's a focus for my magic. Custom made."

"Like a magic booster?" John asked.

"For which kind of magic?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, a booster. And all of my magic." Mina told them.

Sarah whistled.

John was utterly confused.

Sarah smiled just a little. "Magicians can use foci to boost their spells. Most are tuned to one type of magic or spirit. Some aren't so limited and can give a magician more power to any spell or spirit summoning."

At least that made sense to John. He briefly wondered if there were such things for technomancers.

Mina stood, his hands slipping from her shoulders. She turned to face him, and John got a good look at how the choker looked on her. It did seem a little odd seeing his signature icon centered on her throat, but it also looked good on her. He could not help but smile.

"I… I gotta go." Mina quickly said and she rushed out of the kitchen.

John dropped himself into her empty chair, looking at the door dumbfounded. "What just happened?" he asked.

Sarah took a seat next to John. "Magicians have to go through a bonding ritual with their foci before they can use them." she said. "I don't know for sure, but I think she got a strong one. Could be several hours before she's done."

Rei got home later that evening. The three of them had dinner without Mina, though Sarah had made enough for the four of them anyway.

After dinner John and Sarah went back to work on Ravage and attaching its replacement leg. He was glad when this was done and Ravage accepted the new leg like it had been its own the whole time.

It was late in the evening when Mina came back out again. She said nothing as she dropped herself on the couch next to John. Putting an arm around her, Mina sighed and leaned into him.

Not long later they had to go to bed. Again this meant John was sleeping alone. He did not sleep very well.

It was late Saturday morning when John finally woke. After a quick shower he headed downstairs.

"Mornin' stud." Sarah said as John walked into the kitchen. "One egg or two?"

"Two." John half sleepily said as he sat down. The room smelled good of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and maple syrup, and all of it real food.

Mina was already up, finishing her breakfast. Her hair still had a morning frazzle and she wore what looked like was one of Sarah's shirts.

"Looks like you didn't sleep well, either." Sarah said, eggs sizzling. He was just glad she did not harass him about not wearing a shirt.

John said nothing as he sat at the table. In a few minutes Sarah had a plate of food in front of him.

After breakfast was another lazy day. It was just one of those kinds of days where you felt like doing absolutely nothing at all. John and Mina shared the couch while Sarah did something else in the same room. Maybe related to her bounty hunting gig, or whatever. She was not fully within VR as she scolded the both of them when Sarah apparently thought they were getting a little too close.

At least Sarah was not scrutinizing too much what they were doing through the matrix. It really sucked that they could not go outside.

It was getting close to noon when Sarah broke the silence of the room. "Time to get dressed and geared up, kids. We've got a job offer."

"Who called?" John asked.

"Where?" Mina asked.

"Tabby, and the FRFZ Convention Center in the Hub." Sarah told them.

Mina sighed as she peeled herself from John. They trudged to their rooms to get changed for work in the shadows.

It still amazed John that the little spider drone and capsules of mystery gloop had patched the holes in his armored body suit and other clothes. It was almost impossible to tell a bullet had gone through them if you did not look very, very closely.

Mina was waiting for him outside of his room. They held hands as they walked to the garage to catch up with Sarah.

"Pack the hardware in the trunk, kids." Sarah said, popping the trunk to her Ford Spiral.

In the trunk John saw another compartment that was not readily visible. Inside were the parts for Sarah's Steyr AUG-CSL, and it looked like there was more than enough space for more.

"I'm leaving the laser here." Mina said softly as John made sure the safeties were on on his Predators, Warhawk, and Hatamoto II.

"Keeping those holdouts on you?" Sarah asked.

"Never been hassled 'bout 'em before." John said. Even if one of the border guards did, his ID had all the permits necessary to say it was legal for him to have the two Morrissey Élan pistols concealed up his sleeves.

Sarah said nothing more about his handguns. But she had plenty to say about their seating arrangements before they left. He ended up sitting on the passenger side where Sarah could easily see him. Mina was equally stuck just behind Sarah.

John rested his chin in his hand as he watched the city of Denver go by from behind black windows. It seemed more distant and dull from the back seat of her car. Even the border checks getting into the CAS sector followed by the check to get into the Hub seemed dull.

Traffic was horrible in the Hub, all the way up to the convention center.

Originally called the Colorado Convention Center, the building itself was continually upgraded and expanded upwards over the years to accommodate new patrons. The additions kept the original angled roof lines and UV-coated glass, and it now had the look of giant cluster of organically grown crystals.

Finding a parking space in the center's underground parking lot was a challenge. Many spots were filled, and they got lucky by chance when someone else pulled out of a spot.

It looked like a nerd and geek convention was in full swing as they walked in through the doors, the stifling heat of the outdoors suddenly replaced by a fifteen degree chill. When an ork walked by, loud music blaring "_I'm your turbo lover…_" from a box that John would swear was as big as he was, he wondered just what kind of convention it was. The ork was wearing a plaid flannel shirt that was not buttoned up, bell bottom pants, flip-flops, and had his hair dyed green and done up in a way that made John think he had stuck his finger in a light socket.

"What the fuck is going on here?" asked Mina.

"Something called CulCon, I think." Sarah told them. "C'mon, we need to find the Information desk."

"CulCon?" John asked, seeing an elf walk by that was dressed just as strangely. A spiral rainbow colored t-shirt with a denim jacket and matching jeans that looked like they had gone through a wood chipper, a dozen gold chains, and synth-leather shoes that had a bright copper disk embedded in each of them. He carried a box in one hand that was maybe two or three times the size of a commlink that had a thin cord running from it to a set of very large headphones.

Thankfully Sarah was able to find the Information desk and plow a path for John and Mina there.

"Uh, hi. We're here to pick up some ID badges for the Biometrics Symposium." Sarah told the lady behind the desk.

"Names?" the ork woman flatly asked. She looked like she was rather tired of the CulCon already.

"Hunter and Cypher Green, and Firefly Red." Sarah told her.

The ork woman barely looked at them as she handed Sarah three plastic cards. Sarah looked at them before handing John and Mina their cards. There was no picture with the ID, though John could feel an RFID tag was embedded in them, and there was an alligator clip to attach the badge to their clothing.

Along with the ID badge was a data file. John accepted the transfer, and a schedule for the day appeared.

"Alright, looks like we're going this way." Sarah told them as she took the lead again.

More than once John had to quickly sidestep someone. Most of them had a plastic object the size of a burrito held to the side of their head and were talking into it. More than one had something larger.

Mina accidentally bumped into a human who had such an object. He wore a denim jacket with several dozen pins attached to it, bell bottom pants, a narrow tie, and what looked like a Mercedes-Benz logo on a string with mismatched colored beads. He dropped the object he was talking into, and it hit the floor so hard that John thought it was a white painted brick. He was glad it did not land on his foot.

Sarah led them through a rat's maze of hallways. Many doors were open to conference rooms that looked like were part of CulCon.

Then John noticed more closed, and marked, doors. It was here that the mobs of strangely dressed people pretty much ended.

"Room five-twelve. There it is." Sarah said, pointing to door in particular.

It was a small conference room with an oval table in the middle. Two console tables flanked the walls, with one holding pitchers of ice water and a dozen cans of carbonated drinks while the other had a tray of sandwiches and bags of chips.

At the far end of the table was a blond dwarf man in a charcoal gray suit and silvery looking tie that had been loosened. John was glad to see that their Mr. Johnson was dressed normally.

"Help yourself while we wait for everyone to arrive, and then we'll start." the dwarf told them.

John grabbed a plate and several different sandwich halves and a can of soda. Mina did the same. They both were quick to take their chairs at the conference table so they could sit beside each other.

Sarah certainly was not going to give them a nanometer as she took a chair next to John.

"I never thought that people in your, um, profession brought their kids with them." the dwarf said.

"Oh, no, they're not my kinds." Sarah replied. "I'm too young to be their mother." She sighed, adding, "Just old enough to have to try to be."

"I'm sorry? I don't quite understand." the dwarf said.

"She's like a babysitter." John said as he chomped on his second piece of sandwich.

"You're the one who got us the passes in, right?" Sarah asked. "Should check their nametags."

The dwarf waved his hand like he was collecting some invisible pieces of paper. "You're Cypher and Firefly?" he asked.

"Guess she didn't tell you what to expect, eh?" John asked.

"Man, what a bunch of weirdoes out there." remarked Hoss as he walked into the conference room.

"Ah, good. Mr. Hoss Blue, can you tell me who these children are?"

John scowled. He really hated having to prove himself.

"Them there's Cypher 'n Firefly." Hoss said. It looked like he had not even bothered to try checking their ID badges.

"Well," sighed the dwarf, "shouldn't be too dangerous for kids. Please do help yourself, Mr. Blue."

Behind his goggles John rolled his eyes.

Hoss helped himself to as many sandwiches as John and Mina had both grabbed, as well as two differently flavored cans of soda.

"I thank you all for coming as such short notice," the dwarf said, handing Sarah three chips and Hoss one, "I hope not to take too much time, for time is of the essence with what I have to offer you."

Sarah took one of the chips and passed the other two to John. Seeing that these were credsticks he passed one of them to Mina. He slotted it and saw it had five hundred nuyen on it.

"My name is Harold Benson." the dwarf continued, "I manage a research team for Wellmind Enterprises. I've just learned that one of my employees has been targeted by a competitor for 'compensation restructuring.' I've also learned that they intend to act later this afternoon. I believe it's always easier to prevent a bad situation than to fix one, so I'd like to contract your services for the remainder of the day in order to keep my employee happy."

"_Uh, I don't know about this._" Mina nervously said.

"What exactly are we dealing with?" Sarah asked.

"My employee, Marvin Fitz is the most passionate researcher I've ever had the pleasure of supporting." Harold told them. "Because of that he is being sought out by another company, mostly because of his dedication to his work. Marvin's never expressed any discontent…"

"But that'll never stop another company from acquiring him by non-voluntary means." Sarah finished.

"Exactly." Harold said. "And that's exactly what I can't allow to happen."

"Just how do you know this?" asked Hoss.

"I'm sorry, but I can't rightly tell you. Non-disclosure agreement." Harold said.

"Regular corp info gathering?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. Now of course you'll be paid for your time. Seventy-two hundred nuyen each to ensure that Marvin stays with Wellmind."

"With the five hundred for just being here, why not make it seventy-five hundred for an even eight grand total?" Sarah asked.

"Fine, fine." Harold said quickly.

John looked to Mina.

"_As long as I don't have to do… you know…_" Mina said.

"_I don't think we gotta. If he tries, I'll blow his balls off._" John replied. Looking back to Harold he said, "Yeah, we're in."

"_Not if I beat you to it_." Sarah silently added.

John forgot that he had to include Sarah in their private network. It was another condition of their probation.

With his mouth full of another sandwich, Hoss nodded.

"Good!" Harold said excitedly. He waved his hand in the air before continuing. "Marvin Fitz is two meters tall, thin, with brown hair and eyes. He's got a company-issued handheld commlink that he never goes anywhere without. He also wears a deep green windbreaker when he's outside."

John received a file transfer request from Sarah. He accepted it and saw that it was a matrix ID code for Marvin's commlink.

"So we can use this to track him?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. Last I pinged it it was at his home."

"Does he usually work from home?"

"On occasion." Harold said, "He asked to last night before he left. Once you've secured him, call me so I can arrange for longer term protective custody."

John's eyes narrowed. Being wanted by the company you worked for was one thing, but this sounded more like slavery. Life in the shadows may be more dangerous than most, but he liked the freedom it gave too much to give it up for the life of a wageslave.

"And just so we're clear, it's not a matter of keeping him out of the competitor's hands, but keeping him in with Wellmind. Right?" Sarah asked.

"Exactly. Now Marvin often brings pieces of his work projects home with him. He's got the security clearance, he commutes, and he lives in a secure enclave."

"So we secure whatever work projects he might have at home or on him." Sarah said. "Now what if we've gotta destroy them?"

"Then do it." Harold said, "We've got the plans and can remake them with a minimal amount of fuss. We'll lose whatever adjustments he might've made in the last day, but Marvin is much more important than those adjustments."

John had to admit he kind of liked Harold. At least a little bit. Harold seemed genuinely more concerned about Marvin than he did the project, and that deserved at least a little credit.

"The data file I gave you includes access codes for getting into the enclave and his apartment." Harold added.

"Then I guess we've got enough to get started with." Sarah said, standing up.

John and Mina grabbed their last bits of food before standing. The followed Sarah, hand in hand, as they headed for the exit. On the way out John spotted the same green haired ork, his oversized music box now blaring out "_Squealing impassioned as the rod of steel injects…_"

"Oh God, could he find some better music?" groaned Sarah.

"So where's his home?" Hoss asked once they had gotten outside.

"Here's the address." Sarah told him. John felt a burst of transmission as she sent him the file.

"Got it. I'll be right behind you." Hoss told them.

It was a little easier getting out of the Hub than getting in. After that it was a trip back into the UCAS sector.

At least John was able to busy himself with some online research for the job. Amidst all of the crap he found about Wellmind Enterprises in the matrix, what he did find was that they were a subsidiary of Shiawase, one of the triple-A megacorps, and they specialized in cosmetics and other vanity products. He did find a few rumors about some anti-aging product that was supposedly going to knock the competition out of the market. Assuming it could get beyond the research and development stage.

At Sarah's insistence he also looked into both men. First was their supposed 'Mr. Johnson' Harold Benson. Harold was a Denver native, holding a Bachelor's in bioengineering from Colorado State. He had started out in an outsourced forensics lab and worked there for five years before he started work at Wellmind.

The data on Marvin Fitz suggested the guy was a nerd as well as a top researcher, or whatever he did. Graduated top of his class at Colorado Tech twenty-six years ago, and was picked up by Wellmind right after graduation. Marvin apparently held numerous patents, under Wellmind's name, that were all in the regenerative and restorative fields, one of which was the foundation for a skin care product called NuvoDerm.

John shared his findings with the others as they traveled.

It was a good ten minutes after John and the others had gotten to the enclave that Hoss caught up with them. After making sure they all had left their convention center badges behind, Sarah took the lead as she punched in the access code on a physical keypad at the main gate.

John would have called the enclave an apartment complex if he had only seen a picture of the outside. Walking between two buildings before actually going into one of them, John amended his thoughts about the place. An apartment complex would have been too nice. The building they were in was like a collection of boxes piled on top of similar boxes, and all contained within a bigger box. Each little box looked like it had a feeder door, much like how animals for food were kept decades ago.

The place was also not quite meta-friendly. More than once Hoss had to duck for an archway or a light, making sure that he did not catch his horns on anything.

"Hoss, you wait out here." Sarah said when they reached the door to Marvin's place.

"Yeah, fine by me." Hoss said. John figured the large troll might have had an even harder time inside, if the ceiling was as low as he expected. Marvin may have been a thin two meters tall, but Hoss was a beefy two-seventy-five.

The door accepted the code Sarah plugged into it, and John and Mina were right behind her going in.

Marvin Fitz's apartment reminded John of his underground home months ago. Living room, kitchen, and bedroom were all one room. There was a bathroom off to the side, but it was tiny and with the door open rather easy to see into. The place was cluttered with magazines and a few knickknacks. Several stacks of actual magazines were piled next to a battered sofa, pulling extra duty as an end table and footrest.

A small trid sat in one corner, and a relatively large desk was positioned behind the sofa so whoever sat there could still see the trid. An old fashioned looking cyberdeck was on the desk, along with a few super hero action figures, and a cup shaped like another super hero.

"Shit, he's not here. Check the deck. Maybe there'll be a clue." Sarah said as she looked about.

John sat in the chair at the desk. After a few seconds of looking at the cyberdeck he found that it was hinged and opened it up. Inside was a trideo screen and keyboard. The system was locked, but the screen still showed a calendar program with the current date. It had only one appointment listed for today, "Lunch at Lotus Pond."

"Locked, but at least it's wireless." John said.

"Do your magic, and fast." Sarah said.

"It ain't magic." John replied as he started poking at the cyberdeck's firewall. Finding no traps or encoding John bolstered his Exploit form and went straight to forcing his way in. In a few seconds he was through, and wishing he had improved his Stealth form as well.

A black ice, or intrusion countermeasure, program was running and had detected the breach. Before John could react to the hostile program it hit him with a program styled to look like a black beamed ray gun. It felt very uncomfortable and annoying. With a virtual hand he pulled a handgun of his own. One miniature rocket of disruptive code and the black ice crashed.

"Everything okay?" Sarah asked.

"Fucked up the entry a little." John admitted as he forced the cyberdeck to stifle the alert.

"Not too bad, I hope." Sarah said.

"Just had a bot to fuck, that's all." He began checking the data files on the cyberdeck. It took little time to find a folder that held copies of sent and received text messages. The inbound messages were from a variety of locations, a few different commlinks and a few public terminals. The contents revealed that Marvin was in contact with a person named Jarrod who was a representative for a company called Harbortech. From the last few of the messages John read, the extraction was voluntary and Marvin was meeting with Jarrod's team today.

"Place sure looks weird." Mina commented.

"Something doesn't seem right, either." Sarah added. John noticed she was looking at some shelves on one wall. They were largely bare save for a few action figures that were positioned on them.

"Stuff missing?" John asked.

"Yeah, looks like it. Why?" Sarah asked.

"Marvin's leavin' 'cause he wants to." John said. "Got it all here. Happening at a place called Lotus Pond."

"Great, now we just gotta find the place." Sarah said.

"There's only one, and it's at Happy Canyon." John told them.

"Ping his 'link."

John closed his eyes as he took Marvin's commlink ID and started a trace on it. Seconds later he got its location in the Happy Canyon area.

"He's already there."

"Fuck." Sarah cussed, "Cypher, grab the deck and let's go!"

John unplugged the deck and closed it up. Mina was right behind him as they hurried out the door.

"What's up?" asked Hoss as he fell in step behind them.

"He's already rabbited. We gotta get to Happy Canyon now."

John was in the back seat again as they headed back into the CAS sector, Marvin's cyberdeck resting on the seat between him and Mina. Along the way he started digging up information on Harbortech as well as keeping tabs on Marvin's commlink. At Sarah's request he also gave her a copy of all of the messages related to Marvin's transfer to Harbortech.

Harbortech had their office in the CAS sector that opened only two years ago. The fact that they were a subsidiary of Evo, another triple-A megacorporation like Shiawase, did not surprise John all that much.

It was impossible to miss the Happy Canyon Shopping Center with the authentic, nine story Chinese temple just off of Hampden Avenue. The temple stood in the center of a horseshoe shape of stores that were one or two stories tall. Even Red Wire was still open since they had last been there on a job.

Happy Canyon had its share of tourists today, drawn there by the temple itself. Then there were others who were there for the food. Many pavilions had occupied tables beneath them as people spent their lunch break here. John guessed that Marvin was somewhere there based on his continued trace results.

"Check the cameras under the catwalks." Sarah said as they walked into the plaza.

Looking around, John saw several new security cameras that he guessed were not there before. From the weight of the signals around he figured they were not wired, and as he started sorting out the data he was rewarded with being able to see through many of them.

"Idiots." John muttered.

"What?" Sarah asked.

"Wireless and unencrypted." John told them.

"Good to know. And I think I got him." Hunter said, pushing her way into the mess of tables.

Marvin Fitz was at a table by himself, eating lunch of meat and vegetables on thin wooden skewers, and wearing a deep green windbreaker despite how warm the day was. His mouse brown hair was cropped rather short and he wore glasses that had the thickest rims John had ever seen.

"Marvin Fitz?" Sarah asked, taking a seat next to him.

"Yes." Marvin said, not bothering to look up from his lunch.

"You'll need to come with us." Sarah told him.

"Need to?" Marvin asked. "Oh, right. You're my team." He took a bite of meat from the wooden skewer in his hand.

"Yes, yes we are." Sarah said, "If you're all set to go?"

"Yes, yes, of course." Marvin said. He took a napkin and started wrapping up the remains of his lunch.

"Do you do this often?" Marvin asked. He did not even seem to notice that John and Mina were right there.

"Every so often, really. This is the first time I've done it for Jarrod. " Sarah said, looking around more than she paid attention to Marvin.

"And your hand. What model is it?"

"Sony Iron Grip."

Marvin stood just as a smartly dressed ork woman walked up to them. She wore a black suit with skirt and matching sunglasses.

"Excuse me Mr. Fitz, but if you're finished with your lunch now your escorts are ready to bring you to your next meeting." the ork woman said.

"Yeah, we're here. You can go now." John told her.

"Sorry, but Mr. Fitz is on a tight schedule for the rest of the afternoon." the ork said smoothly as she reached for Marvin's arm.

"Yes it is." Sarah replied, "He's got a meeting with Jarrod at Harbortech regarding his new position."

Marvin looked nervously between the two. John wondered if it was the first time two women had ever looked like they were going to start a fist fight over him.

"I honestly must insist." the ork woman said.

The world flickered for an instant, and John saw the ork woman trying to grab a hold of Marvin.

Sarah also grabbed Marvin, and the ork responded by giving Sarah a good slap to the face. Sarah responded by launching her grapple hand to the ork woman's stomach.

The ork woman stumbled back in utter shock. "Get them!" she yelled.

With a twitch of his hands John had his holdouts out and ready to use. "Shit!" he yelled when he saw two men pull an assault rifle from under their jackets. He dropped to the ground and grabbed the table Marvin had just been sitting at. It was heavier than he expected, but he was able to quickly muscle it over for some cover. He thought he heard the ork woman cry out as the table came crashing down.

"What the hell's going on?" yelled Hoss over bursts of gunfire and people screaming.

"Bitch's magic!" Mina yelled. Glancing over to her, John could see her clenching her hands in very tight fists.

A great howling wind arose, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid form that probably stood as tall as Hoss. It looked like a barely contained, roiling storm cloud with eddies of wind stirring dust and small objects around it and a pair of small thunderclouds crackling with lighting for eyes. It had a pair of massive wings that it flapped once, creating a powerful gust of wind that tipped over several tables.

"Holy shit!" Sarah yelled over the combined noise of gunfire and raging wind.

"Be gone black hearted spirit!" John heard the ork woman yell, along with more gunfire that made Mina shriek.

By the sounds of the roaring wind, and a grunt from the ork woman, the spirit did not leave. John peaked around the table to try and see, but ducked back when he heard another burst of gunfire. Again Mina shrieked.

"Hoss, you with us?" Sarah yelled.

"I think so!" Hoss yelled back. "Things're… muddled!"

"Take Marvin and run for your truck! Cypher 'n I'll give some cover fire!"

John felt his heart lodge itself in his throat. The only guns he had were his holdouts and they certainly were not good for cover fire. "These're all I got!" he yelled, showing Sarah his small pistols.

"Then make your shots count!" Sarah yelled back at him. Peeking around her own table she pointed the palm of her right hand towards someone.

Taking a deep breath and swallowing hard, John peeped around his own table. Seeing someone that looked like had pulled a rifle on them, he popped a shot at him. He missed, but the man ducked down behind a table.

"Go! Go!" Sarah yelled.

John needed no extra prompting to run like mad away from the shooters. But it looked like Mina did as she made no move to try and get back onto her feet. Letting his holdouts slide back up his sleeve John grabbed her hand and pulled on her hard as he ran like hell from the shooters.

Sarah's car had its engine running and doors open as soon as they got to it. John jumped in through the back driver side door, pulling Mina in along with him. He banged his knee rather hard on Marvin's cyberdeck as he crawled to the other door to pull it closed.

No time was wasted in leaving, and Sarah was quite anxious to leave as she gunned her car hard. Hoss's truck was nowhere to be seen.

"Shit. Now there's an extraction that gets fucked to hell." Sarah said once it looked like no one was following them. "You kids alright back there?"

"Yeah." grunted John as he massaged his hurt knee.

"Yeah." Mina softly said.

"So, just what happened there?" asked Sarah.

"A cluster fuck?" John asked. This drew a sharp look from Sarah.

"That ork lady was a magician." Mina said softly. "I… I read her aura when she walked up. She tried some magic, but I kinda tried to stop her."

"Tried to?" Sarah asked.

"I… I couldn't protect myself well enough." Mina said, looking down at her hands as she held them in her lap.

"And your spirit, right?"

"Yeah." Mina said softly. "A… wind spirit. I asked… Sammael to help us."

"Sounded like you really fucked up that other magician's day." John said with a smile.

Mina did not even look at him. In fact she looked quite upset. He pushed Marvin's cyberdeck to the floor so he could scoot over to her. She did not resist as John pulled her closer, and she burst into tears when he hugged her.

Sarah only glanced at them while she drove. She looked more concerned than upset, and John was glad she did not hassle them about how close they were now.

After a while Sarah asked, "Hey John, think you can track down our big friend for us?"

"Sure." John said. Once before he had hacked into Hoss's truck, and as long as the access ID of it had not been changed he felt he could find it.

A few minutes later he had Hoss's location and was using the truck's autonav to guide them back together again. He had even managed to get in verbal contact to see if Marvin had fared okay. Turned out today had probably been the most exciting day for the researcher ever. He opted not to tell Mina this, especially when she was still crying with her face pressed against his chest.

At Sarah's request John told them to just follow Sarah's car to their destination. John wondered how long they would wait until telling Marvin the truth that they were really working for his boss, Harold Benson, and not taking him to Harbortech at all.

That destination turned out to be the convention center, John realized, as they reached a border checkpoint to enter the Hub once more. Parking was just as bad as before, but this time around Hoss had been able to park a lot closer to where Sarah did.

Sarah pulled something out of the glove box, handing it to them. It was a pocket bundle of tissues.

"Hey kiddo, felling okay?" she asked.

Saying nothing, Mina just looked at her.

Sighing, Sarah said, "Guess we'll talk later. But so you know, it won't look good if we walk in and Harold sees that you've been balling your eyes out."

Mina took the tissues, dried her eyes, and blew her nose. John took a few to dry her tears from his jacket.

"Now, you got any services left for that wind spirit?" Sarah asked.

"One." Mina said.

"Can it keep anyone from noticing us in the garage? I wanna have a talk with Marvin before we go inside."

"Yeah." Mina said softly.

"Great. If you could ask it to help us there. And don't forget your badges." Sarah told them.

John grabbed Marvin's cyberdeck as he climbed out of Sarah's car. Mina was tight at his side, both arms around him while they stood. He did not mind the chance to keep an arm around her as well, and she seemed to appreciate the gesture.

"Why're we here?" Marvin asked as he climbed out of Hoss's truck. He accepted his cyberdeck from John with a confused look on his face.

"We're covered." Mina told them.

"This's where we're told to drop you off." Sarah said. "And just so we're clear on everything we're not working for Jarrod or Harbortech."

Marvin's face went a shade pale.

"And neither was that woman." Sarah continued. "I snapped an image of her," she pointed to her eyes, "and sent a copy to a contact of mine. Her name's Taijah, and she usually works with a Vory Lieutenant by the name of Mikael Petrov."

"I don't understand…" Marvin said.

"You were being played." John said strongly. "Those messages you got probably weren't from Harbortech at all." When Marvin still looked confused, John added, "You were about to get kidnapped by the mafia to work for them."

That seemed to sink in through Marvin's thick skull. He went weak in the knees, but Hoss was able to catch him to help the researcher keep his feet.

"Whoa, easy there fella." Hoss said.

"Your boss, Harold Benson, got tipped off that you were going to get extracted." Sarah said. "Got us to track you down and make sure you didn't go off with someone else, or that they get your research. He doesn't know you actually wanted to leave."

"And my research?" Marvin asked.

"It's fine in there." John said, pointing to Marvin's cyberdeck.

"Look, our job was to ensure your safety first." Sarah told Marvin.

"Not all bosses are that considerate." Hoss added.

"I guess." Marvin said, sounding a little dejected.

"What's wrong?" Mina asked.

"I was supposed to make tenure some time ago." Marvin told them.

"Ten years? Huh?" Mina asked.

"Not 'ten years', but tenure." Sarah said. "It's like a position in a job. Means you've been there so long that you know your field of work inside and out. Also comes with perks, and usually more money."

"And Harold's been holding me back. He doesn't realize what he's doing." Marvin said.

"Well, now's your chance to talk to him." Sarah said. "Let him know how you feel."

"Fine." Marvin said sourly.

"'K Firefly, you can call off that spirit now." Sarah said.

"Spirit? What spirit?" Marvin asked.

After a second or two Mina said, "He's gone."

"Air elemental our young magician called to help us at Happy Canyon." Sarah said as they started walking towards the convention center doors.

John wondered if they cranked up the AC since they were last at the convention center. It certainly did not seem to deter the convention goers. More than once John caught Marvin saying something about mismatched articles of clothing and accessories. Like it really mattered to John how silly they looked.

It was not all bad. Maybe because of the extra chill in the air Mina was extra close to John as they walked. Even the green haired ork was still there. His massive hairdo was almost impossible to miss, and his music box was still blaring, this time "_So what is wrong, With another sin, The bitch is hungry, She needs to tell…_"

Room five-twelve was not as empty this time as they walked in. Aside from Harold Benson there were four more men in suits, and not the kind with the price tag to impress. Two of them stood at either side of the door into the room.

"Marvin! Marvin!" Harold cried, nearly swooning. "I'm so sorry about all the trouble you've gone through."

"_Is he serious?_" Mina asked silently.

"_He's quite sincere._" Sarah said.

John walked over to the table where the cans of soda were still on ice. There were still seven cans of soda remaining, so John grabbed two. Mina also pocketed two for herself.

"Yes, yes, don't feel like I've forgotten about you as well." Harold said. He handed both him and Mina a silver colored credstick. John slotted the credstick and saw the seventy-five hundred nuyen for the job, so he pocketed it as well.

"Right, time we were heading off home." Sarah said.

John took one last look at Marvin and Harold on the way out. Harold was still apologizing like mad to Marvin while Marvin just listened. It looked like Marvin had forgiven his boss, but the look John saw him give them spoke of a bit of wisdom the researcher had gained that day.

"Hey! Don't forget these!" Sarah called out. Looking back, John saw her holding up her convention badge.

"Oh, right." John said as he pulled off his badge and tossed it onto a table. Mina did the same with hers.

Once the conference room doors were closed behind them, Mina asked, "What kind of guy is he like?" Again she was welcomed at John's side.

"A real nerd." Hoss said with a sigh. "Just wouldn't shut up with questions and smart talk."

"He a really smart guy?" John asked, "Didn't seem all that sharp to me." Maybe Marvin was a genius, the kind that had absolutely no social skills. Much like many of the convention goers as they tried to make their way back outside again.

"There's all kinds of smarts, kid." Sarah said.

"I'd wager you're just as smart as that guy." Hoss said, "But you're not an ass 'bout it."

"He's an asshole?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah, I'd say so." Hoss said with a sigh. "He just doesn't talk well with people, I guess."

Music was still playing from the CulCon participants, especially from that green haired ork's music box. The music was a little different as the singer chanted, "_Getting out my pitch fork, Poking your hay…_" This one certainly was the weirdest song John had heard, ever.

John was glad once they were outside. The heat of the day was more welcome than the incredible chill of the air conditioned convention center.

"Well, see y'all next job." Hoss told them as he climbed into his truck. There they parted ways.

Sarah said nothing while John and Mina shared the back seat of her car on the way back home. Not for the last time John wondered if Sarah was going to ease up about the two of them being so close together.

* * *

Author's Notes:

The song lyrics quoted above are from real and copyrighted music by various musicians. To add to the mystique from the character's point of view, I won't be naming names. They are in no way my own lyrics, and all are used without permission of the artists or their labels. No harm or disrespect is intended (just trying to make sure and cover my ass).

This is also the first chapter that I had no notes at all for cannon or official mission results. The same will hold true for the remaining chapters in this story.


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